Gay marriage

[Ollie the Optimist]

as i understand it, a civil partnership doesnt give quite the same legal rights as a marriage done in a registry office with regards to inheritance etc. i could be wrong but i think it was something about that.

in my opinion, anyone should be able to get married legally, ie in the eyes of the law not the church, and have teh same rights, wether its straight or gay people. there should be no difference.

however the church is a seperate issue, and one politics should stay out of. you cant make the church accept something it doesnt want too when it is governed by different rules.

[WMUG]

as i understand it, a civil partnership doesnt give quite the same legal rights as a marriage done in a registry office with regards to inheritance etc. i could be wrong but i think it was something about that.

in my opinion, anyone should be able to get married legally, ie in the eyes of the law not the church, and have teh same rights, wether its straight or gay people. there should be no difference.

however the church is a seperate issue, and one politics should stay out of. you cant make the church accept something it doesnt want too when it is governed by different rules.

Agreed about the Church.

However, I don't think it should be up to church leadership whether or not individual churches should be able to marry gay people, it should be up to the bishop, vicar, pastor or whatever of that particular church.

[Niall_Quinn]

as i understand it, a civil partnership doesnt give quite the same legal rights as a marriage done in a registry office with regards to inheritance etc. i could be wrong but i think it was something about that.

in my opinion, anyone should be able to get married legally, ie in the eyes of the law not the church, and have teh same rights, wether its straight or gay people. there should be no difference.

however the church is a seperate issue, and one politics should stay out of. you cant make the church accept something it doesnt want too when it is governed by different rules.

Sure you can Ollie. All you need to do is open the door in every other place until the church is in a minority of one. Then you run the old argument of them being the odd one out and fundamentally at odds with society. The religious aspects won't matter it'll just be a warped numbers game - ONE church (not 15-20% of the planet) against millions of "open" and "progressive" folks - the dishonest kind of argument they thrive on. They will then beat the "minority" in order to promote the rights of minorities - that reversal of reason again. That's why you can't give the PC mob even the thin end of the wedge because they'll use it to wedge other doors open. There's no "enough" or compromise with these people. Like cancer, once they are in it is their mindless and unthinking duty to spread.

[Syn]

Sure you can Ollie. All you need to do is open the door in every other place until the church is in a minority of one. Then you run the old argument of them being the odd one out and fundamentally at odds with society. The religious aspects won't matter it'll just be a warped numbers game - ONE church (not 15-20% of the planet) against millions of "open" and "progressive" folks - the dishonest kind of argument they thrive on. They will then beat the "minority" in order to promote the rights of minorities - that reversal of reason again. That's why you can't give the PC mob even the thin end of the wedge because they'll use it to wedge other doors open. There's no "enough" or compromise with these people. Like cancer, once they are in it is their mindless and unthinking duty to spread.

Hope you're right. I can't wait for all that to happen. But just a minor point on the label you've given us cancerous folk (that's unusually PC of you): I, for one, don't thrive on dishonest arguments. I never need to. But you're absolutely right about the numbers game. I hope the next event where we can pat ourselves on the back for forcing a change that fucks over the innocent, logically-sound 1% isn't far away.

[Niall_Quinn]

Hope you're right. I can't wait for all that to happen. But just a minor point on the label you've given us cancerous folk (that's unusually PC of you): I, for one, don't thrive on dishonest arguments. I never need to. But you're absolutely right about the numbers game. I hope the next event where we can pat ourselves on the back for forcing a change that fucks over the innocent, logically-sound 1% isn't far away.

Thanks, I try to avoid the PC bullshit as you know because I find it stifles thought, observation, creativity, diversity and ultimately liberty. As for the rest, great, think and say what you want. That's the whole point.

[Syn]

Thanks, I try to avoid the PC bullshit as you know because I find it stifles thought, observation, creativity, diversity and ultimately liberty. As for the rest, great, think and say what you want. That's the whole point.

That's a lot of great buzzwords. Since you like creativity, next time you can mix things up a bit - I suggest 'uniqueness', 'independence', 'variation', 'pace', 'power', 'desire' and 'mental strength'.

[Niall_Quinn]

That's a lot of great buzzwords. Since you like creativity, next time you can mix things up a bit - I suggest 'uniqueness', 'independence', 'variation', 'pace', 'power', 'desire' and 'mental strength'.

I agree, those words do tend to be reduced to soundbytes or buzzwords. But they used to have meaning before we all became enlightened. I'm an old stick in the mud, missed out on all that shiny new stuff.

[Xhaka Can’t]

I agree, those words do tend to be reduced to soundbytes or buzzwords. But they used to have meaning before we all became enlightened. I'm an old stick in the mud, missed out on all that shiny new stuff.

Yeah, little bit like 'natural goalscorer'.

[V-Pig]

What annoys me about this is it’s dressed up as a fight for equal rights. It isn’t. That battle has already been fought and won. Rightly so. It might be called something different but civil partnerships, far as I understand it, confer all the same rights as marriages do. This is an issue about semantics, not rights.

The definition of marriage is not a private, minority one. It's been defined like that for millenia.

I don't think gay people should be able to call their unions 'marriage' because that word has a very well defined and understood meaning. For religious people it has an extra significance. I see no reason to change that definition. I have no problem with equal rights and those equal rights already exist.

Do you think men and women should compete together in the Olympics in the name of equality? Men and women are NOT equal. They are of equal worth but that doesn't mean that they're the same. A civil partnership is in some ways the same as my marrige but in some ways it's different. It can't produce children naturally, for example. I'm quite happy to recognise it as of as equal worth - it already is recognised as such in law - but that doesn't mean I think it should be called the same thing. I don't see that affects anyone's rights. There's nothing wrong with recognising there are differences. I wouldn't recognise a man marrying 2 women as a marriage either. I don't care if they want to carry on like that, that's their business, but it's not what I'd understand as marriage.

The fact that something has been as it is for millennia isn't a reason it shouldn't be changed.

The battle for equal rights hasn't been won. This is shown by the MPs who made exhortations against gay marriage on homophobic grounds or claimed that this is a Christian country in order to try and strengthen their arguments.

You talk about a civil partnership not being able to produce children naturally but this surely isn't relevant, since many marriages also can't produce children naturally. If a woman marries a man whose testicles have been shot off defending this country from oil-wielding "savages", and who thus obviously can't produce children naturally, does this have any bearing on the validity of their marriage?

The main point is, these things change. Marriage enshrines a relationship between two loving (supposedly) people. What the homophobic originators of marriage (millennia ago, presumably) did not want to acknowledge is that two people in a relationship can be of the same sex because some people are gay (get over it etc. etc.). We are just now noting that difference in law. The fact that something was different before doesn't mean it was right before. For millennia we acknowledged the right to slavery and the impossibility of rape within marriage but I doubt the people who argued against making rape in marriage a crime had much headway when claiming it had always been cool for the previous millennia.

[WMUG]

Thank you Greg, you've articulated what's been trying to escape my head this whole thread.