Gay Marriage

[Occhidiangela]

The strength of my position is the universial nature of marriage as a bond between man and woman -- up to the present.

I can can call a pig a goat, but it is not one. As the old wizards in a hundred mythologies assert, to know the true name of something is to hold power over it. (Ursula K LeGuinn first introduced that idea to me in the Earthsea stories.) To corrupt the Name is thus, in part, an attempt to corrupt the Thing. (Hmmm, that is a bit Hegelian.) The power of words is no small part of the debate, as I am sure you are aware. Controlling and or choosing the language of a discussion is a means of using leverage to achieve one's end, while attempting to appear objective. Ask any lawyer. The problem, of course, in that path of discussion is that laws, codified habits and practices, are extremely semantics and meaning dependent. That informs my attack on the sloppy terms used. The general sloppiness in the public discussion disturbs me, partly due to my own background in crafting doctrinal tenets and policies. That exercise also requires careful consideration of each word chosen.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't call an strut a cantilever.

The name calling and semantic hair splitting is hardly gracious, particularly the use of terms that polite company no longer use, and the shock value was deliberate. "twas also a chance to indulge, once again, in some locker room humor. Call me a curmudgeon, but I weary of all of the dancing about the point. Sometimes, a cripple is a cripple. Other times, a boor is a boar, which is a pig. ;)

While such chaffe certainly detracts from my original, and most culturally grounded point, the real frustration with the growing practice of obfuscation is personal. Getting the words right matters to me, and always has. (Hey, has Occhi ever been a Grammarian? DOH!) The narrowness of the Reader's Digest version of the position pro as portrayed in much of the "one page deep" discussion in the media, and on discussion forums such as this one, is that the act of choosing a partner based on an unconventional premise, same gender, renders irrelevant the nature of the formal pairing being of opposite gender that it is aping.

Where you mistake me is in assuming that what was probably a case of what is now called homophobia in my teenage years has sustained into adulthood. That is an easy impression to be left with based on some of the language in the post. As many of my friends have noted, I am prone to sometimes cut through the BS to get at a particular point. Tactless is another term used in conjunction with my name. When I get a chance to share a real cup of Joe with you in person, we can discuss the wherefore and why.

But back to the discussion at hand. Since laws and social customs are the focus of the debate as it stands now, since simple homosexual behavious is far more socially accepted and condoned that it was even thirty years ago, imprecision in the language is exactly what must be stamped out.

Examine the assumptions, you warn us many time, Pete, in a variety of conversations. That is worth doing in this discussion as well. My desire to apply that guidance in this case is an effort, among other things, to expose how damned hard and how detailed the effort must be to get the proper level of social support for the new norm to include the same gender pairing, if that is to become codified in law. If we get one thing right on this topic, let's get the law that gets crafted to codify the formal, versus the "living together informal," social relationship of two homosexual or lesbian Americans, right the first time: or at least as right as possible. If the vast majority choose to call it marriage, it will be over my objection on the grounds of calling a pig a goat, however, like some other laws I disagree with, I'll accept it as "good enough for government work." That standard is all that many of our laws can claim to have met.

It takes buy in, if it is a law, since laws are commonly agreed on, via whatever law making process there is in a society, norms of behaviour. If the evolution of our own laws and our own cultural attidudes is the direciton of pro, versus contra, so be it. In the end, such a course of action could well reduce the aggregate amount of hate and discontent in our country, which would be a good thing, and even extend the number of people indulging in the pursuit of happiness.

That end is part of why the public discusssion of this topic is worth considering and participating in.

But for my money, let it be done without cloaking the detail in shadow. Get it all, and I mean all, out in the open. (I know I have!)

I still can find no logic from a pragmatic point of view regarding the lesbian couples, based on the finite factors I consider, but I am not the King. In truth, there are more factors to consider before all is sad and done than I am willing to take the time to consider at present.

Allegedly, the laws in a representative society require the buy in of the citizen, though that ideal is not as common as many of us would like. At present, the discussion is quite polarized. So too was the heated debate on "Women's Lib" and more importantly "Women's suffrage." In time, the country has ended up better off with both.

PS: thanks for the link. :lol: You unintentionally hit upon, in the depths an entitlement issue regarding military pensions that I will not get into here, an extremely sore subject, based on completely subjective, outdated, and in my mind BS assumptions.