dgs49 wrote:"...fundamental human rights." What grotesque hubris. To imagine that a trendy contemporary initiative that has somehow eluded the human race for hundreds of thousands of years is "fundamental" and "human."
First, pick up a dictionary and learn the meaning of the word hubris, because you are continually using it incorrectly. Even if you were to claim that a belief in the right of same-sex couples to marry is caused by excessive pride or arrogance (which is itself ridiculous, what does pride have to do with it), that isn't enough to constitute hubris, which requires some significant negative consequence to befall the person demonstrating excessive pride. It is pride of the "going before a fall variety". Which again does not apply here, because the belief in the right of same-sex couples to marry is making it come true faster than anyone could have envisioned only 10 years ago.
Apparently someone was never exposed to the basic elements of tragedy while in school.
Second, this notion that the nature of any human institution, particularly marriage, has remained static over time is moronic. For more than 99.9% of human existence, it was seen as acceptable for some humans to own some others. Is the ability to live as free men and women any less a fundamental right simply because for almost the entirety of human existence there were humans to whom the right to be free did not yet exist? It took over 99.9% of human existence before most, but not all, of the world acknowledged that women are not a lower form of humanity and so should not suffer a legal standing inferior to that of men. Does the fact that women only recently got the right to vote and the right to own property make those rights any less fundamental?
The difference between Negro and Caucasian is largely cosmetic and cannot justify different treatment under the law.
So you say. And yet for over two centuries African-Americans were barred from marrying at all, and then for another century they could not marry outside their race. At the time those who supported such discriminatory treatment believed themselves to be on the side of the angels because, after all, they relied on the Bible to justify their actions. It took over 300 years for American society (most of it, anyway) to come to the enlightened viewpoint you have just described and to finally say that those who had seen it differently in the preceding centuries had been wrong. Somehow I don't think it will take even a fraction of that time before those who opposed same-sex marriage will be seen as having been just as wrong, in spite of the fact that they, too, saw their viewpoint as biblically-based.
The difference between male and female is significant and fundamental; and the difference between a biologically appropriate male-female relationship and one that is exclusively characterized by sexual perversion and creative masturbation is a chasm.
So your hangups about which body parts can be used for sex and which must not is going to be the basis for defining marriage? How many heterosexual couples who will never have children and/or who enjoy sexual activities other than the missionary position will not be eligible to marry under your criteria
I have no objection to the State recognizing any sort or relationship it wants to - no sweat off my balls either way, as long as it is done legitimately rather than by some rogues on a court.
Which is why you always put "marriage" in quotation marks when referring to same-sex spouses, even when those relationships were recognized by the state through a process you would consider legitimate (and again, it is telling that a court that decides that the right to free speech includes the right to spend unlimited amount of money is seen as doing its job, but a court that has the nerve to decide that the Equal Protection Clause actually does mean what the words say has gone "rogue").
But to say that there is some "fundamental" obligation of governments to sanction these perverse couplings is delusional and ignores the entire scope of human history, including contemporary experience.
Here's a newsflash, over the course of human history, humans have been wrong about a lot of things they believed to be true or just or good, and they have also been able to correct the errors in their thinking as knowledge increased. Humans used to believe that, for women, marriage involved a loss of autonomy over their own person. As a result, over most of human history, including contemporary history, it was not a crime for a man to beat his wife or to force sex on her against her will. It took well into our lifetimes before the law no longer gave a man the same control over his wife's body that masters once had over their slaves. Would we say, simply because it is a recent development, that women do not have a fundamental right to be protected from violence if it is perpetrated by their husbands?
People have the right to be treated equally by their governments, especially in matters that go to the very heart of what it means to be human, such as
