Bert and Ernie agenda

[Andara Bledin]

Well, why don't you put forth a reason and we can discuss from there.

Or you can keep deflecting and let us continue to think that your only reason for your lack of support is xenophobic bigotry.

^-.-^

[PepperElf]

o yes i already stated my reasons but you feel their not rational

and now I'm "deflecting" by pointing out that many of the opinions i've seen here are hypocritical.. that it's all about "tolerance" ... but if you don't support MY view you're intolerant and harmful bla bla blah

and now i'm a xenogist too. cool. yay me.
let's see.. i'm intolerant, hateful, harmful and a bigot all because i'm not running around waving a 'yay gay marriage' flag and voiced an opinions that don't go along with the bandwagon.

yes yes yes im the one deflecting... and am "in the wrong" because other people are offended by me not waving the flag. O_o

[Ginger Tea]

Edit:

o yes i already stated my reasons but you feel their not rational

Care to refresh my memory as I cannot remember it at all.

yeah i know someone's going to quote that line about "when good men do nothing to stop evil"

That was said five pages ago

I've asked in my last post and maybe a few others too and all thats been responded was "If you dont support disabled vets then you must hate them."

So I ask again

If no one is trying to get married in a church, just married full stop, be it in a court house, a quickie chappel in vegas or hell seeing as Captains are or did have the power to marry people, on some cruise somewhere are you against that?

I don't care if the churches of the world don't perform ceremonies, a judge signing the certificate is just as legaly binding.

Alot of people seem to think we should force churches into performing marriages they think are ungodly, TBH I think churches should keep out of marriages of the 21st century, gone are the days when just saying "I do"* in a church made it so, now you have to sign legaly binding forms and stuff, the same forms that a court room wedding would use.
To me church weddings are just for those that want the princess / fairy tale wedding, now we can get married in a broom closet sized registry office on a beach, hell even sky diving naked.

In natural born killers, Micky and Mallory got 'Married' on a bridge, they said their vows to each other, but as it was not performed in the eyes of the law, all they did was commit to each other, legaly speaking she was still unwed and not permitted to sharing anything anything guarantied by law and the relevant tax breaks.

...

Another option.
Say gay and lesbian weddings in the states could only be performed by a drunk Elvis impersonator at one specific Vegas quickie chappel, that only looks like a church and has never had a sermon performed there in its life, is that OK?

I'm not religious and don't really give a flying about some guy with a giant splinter problem, I do know that you do not have to be religious to get married, so two athiests getting married (in or out of a church) doesn't offend anyone, so gays getting married at the "I'll have a cheeseburger chappel of lurv." doesn't offend me, although I would rather they had more options of when and where to get married.

If it's not in a church then so be it, no loss in my book.

And in time, if it isn't quite legal at the moment, I can forsee a flubberesque video confrence type wedding, for those serving overseas or on oil rigs or similar long term out of state jobs.
A church might not accomodate such a scheme, nor would I expect it to, two court rooms or one and an appointed employee of oil rig at one end sign the forms and fax copies over bobs your uncle man in Alaska marries woman in Tokyo.

[Andara Bledin]

o yes i already stated my reasons but you feel their not rational

All I can recall is that you said, "Oh, noes, if we let the gay people marry each other then the state might think about possibly forcing the churches to perform the ceremonies." Which is completely unfounded and not going to happen.

The fact that you have something against the idea of two legal adults becoming married purely based on the fact that they are the same gender is xenophobic bigotry. You can wail and moan and cry that you're being falsely accused, but that doesn't make it so.

^-.-^

[Gravekeeper]

o yes i already stated my reasons but you feel their not rational

Well, they are not. There is no precadent and certainly no chance of it in a free country. Nevermind in the US, which would have a collective shitfit if something like that happened.

and now i'm a xenogist too. cool. yay me.

You may wish to look up the definition of xenophobia.

let's see.. i'm intolerant, hateful, harmful and a bigot all because i'm not running around waving a 'yay gay marriage' flag and voiced an opinions that don't go along with the bandwagon.

You are disagreeing with a basic human right with an unfounded reason.

yes yes yes im the one deflecting... and am "in the wrong" because other people are offended by me not waving the flag. O_o

You're certainly...twisting in the wind. >.>

[Rapscallion]

I've actually got a bit of sympathy for Pepperelf on this one, though for different reasons.

See, I've occasionally been the recipient of some false dichotomy - for gay marriage or against us. Fortunately this wasn't at work, especially since I reckon about a fifth to a quarter of my colleagues are same-sex oriented.

However, the person doing the for us/against us bollocks had deliberately avoided the third option of not really caring. My reason for this is that I consider romance as a general concept to be a spectator sport, best treated as a comedy.

I don't go out specifically compaigning against gay marriage. That's the province of the religious types. I'm not an activist for it - I don't mind people getting married, but I'm not that emotionally involved.

Just seems to be that there are vocal elements on both sides who find the next most objectionable thing to an opposing view is someone who doesn't really care much.

Rapscallion

[Gravekeeper]

However, the person doing the for us/against us bollocks had deliberately avoided the third option of not really caring. My reason for this is that I consider romance as a general concept to be a spectator sport, best treated as a comedy.

Yes, but apathy is not the reason PepperElf gave. Apathy would have been a much less volatile discussion really. >.>

[Andara Bledin]

Thinking that any human rights issue is merely about the specific issue currently at hand is short-sighted and simple-minded.

All human rights issues affect all humans. We may not feel an issue's impact right away, but it will have repercussions. Not fighting for the rights of ourselves, the rights of others, is no better than turning your back while a group of bullies beat up someone smaller.

I'm not saying that you need to jump into the fray and wave the flag and cry from the rooftops, but to sit idly by and not even acknowledge that there is a problem to be addressed is acting like a sheep just munching grass and hoping that the wolves don't decide that your flock is next.

[edit to add]

Plus, civil marriage isn't necessarily about love, so not being interested in romance isn't necessarily a reason to not be interested in marriage. It's a legal contract with unique rights conferred to the participants that is unmatched in scope and unmatchable with any other legal avenue. There are likely thousands of people who marry every year for reasons completely unrelated to love. Whether it be right of succession, right of inheritance, or simply so that one partner cannot be locked out of the other partner's life by people the state has deemed to have more say due to reasons purely of blood relation and without consideration of actual interpersonal relationships.

If it was purely about love, then there would be no need to care whether the state recognizes it or not. All that would take is an ordained minister of your faith of choice being willing to officiate. But it's not about that, which is why religion is entirely irrelevant to this particular discussion.

^-.-^

[Sleepwalker]

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible."

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

My thoughts when a person claims that they are free of bigotry, they simply do not care enough about the civil rights of others to vote for them...

[Canarr]

o yes i already stated my reasons but you feel their not rational

Well, since I'm a newcomer to this discussion, and find it a bit all over the place at times, which makes it harder to follow one line of thought: could I trouble you to just list your reasons once more for me? Pretty please?

[PepperElf]

yes i know it was quoted earlier that's why i brought it back up.

that's the problem with that quote... your definition of "evil" isn't the same as everyone elses. and i do not have to go by your word as if you're god. that's what you're not getting. just as you try to tell me i can't decide what's right for you... you too are not the lord of all with the right to decide for me what i shoud and shouldn't support or what i should and shouldn't call good and evil.




and yes i know the definition of the word, just perhaps not all the spelling combinations of it. but apparently for not going allow with the crowd i'm declaring myself better than everyone else... which if anything seems to be the same thing i'm getting from a lot of people here so that's bollocks too.


and again the false claim that there won't be lawsuits. i already showed there have been. and provided links.

[Gravekeeper]

and again the false claim that there won't be lawsuits. i already showed there have been. and provided links.

Lawsuits are not precedents. This is what you are failing to grasp. You seriously think the supreme court would ever rule in favour of such a thing? Religious freedom is guranteed by your constitution. Much as it is up here in Canada. Where we have gay marriage ( and have had it for a while now ) and where the law clearly states no religious institution can be compelled to perform a gay marriage against its will. And this is Canada, the socialist liberal dystopia. =p

You can file a lawsuit for any god damn stupid thing you want, it doesn't mean you're actually going to win or even have it make it to court. Especially if its in violation of the constitution.

There is zero chance of your scenario unfolding and I honestly don't understand how you can believe it would unfold anywhere in the US. I'm not even American and I can see quite easily that such a thing would never, ever happen there. The country would flip it's shit.

So yeah, new reason please. If you just don't give a shit, fine, just come out and say so. But your current argument holds no water and your insistence on clinging to it is reflecting poorly on you honestly.

[Rageaholic]

why should you decide for me what is good and bad?
who made you the ruler of what is right and wrong?

It depends.

If you don't give a rats ass one way or another, I see nothing wrong with that. I mean, I never really cared about gay marriage until a couple of years ago when I realized "why can't they get married?". I admit the concept seemed wierd to me and I can't say I'd ever be crazy about it. But I might as well support their rights to it since it doesn't affect anyone but them. I mean like you said, who are we to decide what's right for anyone else? Isn't that what you're doing if you're against their right to get married?

If you don't care about the issue, that's one thing, but if you're against giving them the right to marry, than you're basically telling them what's right for them.

[Andara Bledin]

that's the problem with that quote... your definition of "evil" isn't the same as everyone elses.

I don't want to live in a world where those who allow a group of people to be oppressed and abused for no reason other than that they happen to have one thing different than the rest of us aren't considered evil.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible."

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

All excellent soundbites. And?

See, for me it's like health issues. If you read any popular media, you're going to find a celebrity trying to persuade you to look out for symptoms of this disease or that disease because it affected them or their family. People trying to 'raise awareness of' conditions you've not heard of before. The next day, same again for a different condition. Just how many self-checks can you do and remember to look for?

Similarly with causes - there are thousands of them. I can't care about everything going. I'm suffering from compassion fatigue. Just because I'm not an activist for one person's particular preference doesn't mean to say I hate them and their works. There's only so much fuck I can give.

Sure, there are good reasons to support a cause, including the one mentioned here. How do I weigh it against the weekly email from Avaaz? You know, things like women being sentenced to be stoned to death because they were raped - that sort of lack-of-fun thing. Are the whales going to end up extinct? Oops - the focus has gone to polar bears last I saw. Are Nestle still giving away free powdered milk to force African families to depend on their wares? Is there yet another war in the shithole that's the middle east? Are the corrupt authorities still enabling famine in the poorer regions of Africa? Are people in China still being imprisoned in hard labour camps for dissenting against the government?

I suppose that's a more generic comment, rather than the specific item for debate. I think it should go a little way towards explaining my personal mindset.

I suspect the majority of those fine, upstanding citizens concerned about so much that they came up with the above quotables didn't live in an environment with so many causes to support.

Rapscallion