"Then why the hell not just let it be marriage?"Marriage is between a man and a woman. Not a man and a man...nor a woman and a woman. That's why.
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Gay Marriage - a secular view
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Marriage is between a man and a woman. Not a man and a man...nor a woman and a woman. That's why.Give it a rest. This isn't a religous debate. Find another thread for that. For once it's nice to hear this debate without religion being pulled in.
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Let's see what Mr. Dictionary says!
In reply to:
marriage
--noun
1. the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.
Damn. There were more definations, but the 1st one is always the true meaning. Something like that.
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"Give it a rest. This isn't a religous debate."You just now brought it into the thread...not I. Seriously, why bring religion up now? Just because I posted something? Hmmmm...seems like I'm the one stuck with a label now.
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I understand you point, I really do. But at the same time I just see no point in instituting a new form of legalized marriage when we already have something in use.< Different type of relationship, different role in society, etc. Still I get what you mean. It would be a hassle to construct civil unions properly, but other countries seem to be pulling it off, England for example. It would likely be harder here though.>It seems very backwards to me.< I understand. It's not necessary that we agree on this either. I had an instructor in college who used to say that if we all agreed on everything, 3/4 of us wouldn't be using our brains for much of anything. He had a poster that said, "One plus one equals three...if you use sufficiently large values for one" or something like that. His point being that we have to approach things with outside-the-box thinking sometimes. >there are still a lot of us, gay and straight, who look at marriage as much more than an piece of paper. I look at it as a special ceremony under the eyes of god uniting two people who love each other.<Perhaps, but I am trying to approach this from the civil law view only, as in what does the law say, how does it fit into society, etc. God may have a lot to do with individual relationships and morals, but I don't think He has much to do with marriage licenses, court decisions, etc. >I think if people would really open their eyes and minds they would see that someone being gay is so trivial to whom a person is.< It is SO good to find a gay person who sees this! So many seem to feel that being gay constitutes the majority of who they are, and it doesn't. We are all so much more than how we prefer to have sex, just as we are all much more than the color of out skins. Great point, and a great place to move on as well. Thank you for sharing your views with me.
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Thanks for the tip on UBB code and URLs. Just tried it and it works great!
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In reply to: If you have a Civil Union, do you get the same benefits of marriage? Like, can you be on your partners health insurance? For the most part, yes. The benefits may not be identical depending on just how civil unions are set up, but for health care it would certainly be the same. In fact, many companies do that already for gay couples. The gay employee just has to list who their partner is on the appropriate forms.
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In reply to: Then why the hell not just let it be marriage? Am I wrong in thinking this is just stupid? I think so. To use the tree example, apple trees and pear trees both grow in soil, both need water, and both reproduce with seeds grown inside of edible fruit. They have a LOT in common, but you can't call an apple tree a pear tree. Why not? Because it isn't one.
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I apologize for the length of this post, but what was said deserved serious and comprehensive answers.>The "herd strategy", with regard to kings and rulers, has more to do with the exercise of power and nothing, as far as I can tell, to do with an overarching reproductive strategy for humanity as whole.< The "herd strategy" is an exercise in power in the case of many animals as well. When two stallions, elk or lions fight over territory or females, the most powerful one wins. If they are doing exactly the same thing, does it really matter what their motivations are? Here is a quote from a relevant book, 'The Way of Bison: Fighting to Dominate' by Dale F. Lott, professor of Psychology at U. of California, Davis. "The primary value in being dominant is to be able to stay with the cows and breed them. In natural selection the breeding itself spells success. But that is not the motivation of bull buffaloes. They want to dominate other males." I personally own a small herd of goats, and the dominant buck doesn't drive the other males away except in the case of a female in heat, but he does, by shoving and pushing, continually assert that he is "the boss of them" whether or not there is a female around. This doesn't sound very different from what you described in kings and rulers, does it?>In all of the cultures (note that I didn't say religions), that I am aware of, where polygamy was common place it's existence had more to do with a lack of male partners. A lack do, mainly, to war or to a lessor extent other outside factor. While these factors lead to what on the surface looks like a herd strategy, in actuality, they have nothing to do with any natural reproductive strategy.< The loss of a high percentage (over 20%) of males in a culture due to war is such a rare event you can't truly ascribe anything significant to it in terms of it's affect on polygyny. The historical accounts of the Bible speak of such exterminations, but they also speak of claiming the women as prizes in these events, something a king with a large harem might allow to keep his soldiers pacified and under his control which again fits what I have been describing. Harems in the natural world have more to do with the relative size of male and female of a particular species. Males that are the same size or smaller than their females rarely have harems. Human males are enough larger than their female counterparts that small harems (2-6 or so) wouldn't be unusual or unexpected. Again, natural reproductive strategies have little or nothing to do with the motivations of the creatures involved, and it's only the end result that matters.>"It" being a herd strategy of reproduction, where and in what cultures?<The Incas for one. Here in an excerpt from "Offspring: Human Fertility Behavior in Biodemographic Perspective""In the case of the Inca, the size of a man’s harem was regulated by law and was in direct relationship to his social/political rank. Among the Inca there were nine levels of political rankings with polygyny ceilings for each except the top-most. These harems were exclusive holdings of large numbers of young fecund women with their children, and access to them was restricted to their mate and regulated." Again, legal regulation (essentially marriage) of access to females means less conflict. The law decides the issue, which means that civilization could grow. Without it the fighting over mates would have destroyed them. Further along in that same text we find the following."There are two clear outcomes of such variance. The first is that many men remain unmated or have only one wife, so male celibacy or at least nonmarital sex is prominent. In the words of Dickemann, polygyny in the context of extreme social stratification is “characterized not only by arbitrary sexual rights of lords and rulers but by large numbers of masculine floaters and promiscuous semi-floaters, beggars, bandits, outlaws, kidnappers, militia, and resentful slaves and serfs.” (Dickemann, 1981:427). Nevertheless, these early despotic states lasted for thousands of years. A second outcome of variance in male resource holding and male mating success is that there tends to be universal marriage for women, with only those most severely compromised by health or other personal qualities being unlikely to find a role as secondary wife or minor union. For access to the mating market, men must bring wealth, power, and land in order to be favorably placed or else get wives as high-risk booty in state warfare (Clarke and Low, 2001; Low, 2000)." That such things have a major affect on the gene pool is plain, but the real point is that marriage controlled any conflict within the civilization that might have been destabilizing and forced the unmated males to turn their conflict outward in the search for a mate, with only small unorganized exceptions.>>>"I suspect we needed larger groups than the bonobo style sexual socializing could provide for, and that we eventually became sexually competitive is self evident.">The competitiveness sited here has nothing, as far as I can see, to do with a "herd strategy" for reproduction. Moreover it's not even the same kind of competitiveness. The competitiveness here has more to do with winning the favor of a receptive female not to exert dominance over other males.<Again, the motivations of the competitors have little to do with the end result, which turns out exactly the same. The only difference is if marriage has already been instituted the larger group stays together and if it hasn't, they don't. Among pre-civilization humans, the favor of a fecund female went to a male who controlled and made available sufficient resources (including himself) to provide for herself and her children, but in subsequent early civilizations her favor might not have mattered as much, as she herself might have been seen as one of those resources. Motivations are different among bulls and lions but the result is the same. The institution of marriage and laws governing it among humans provided for the growth of civilizations amid these competitions, whatever the motivation.>In the case of humanity nature seems to favor a couple working together, in cooperation, to successfully rear the offspring. In the herds and packs, that I am aware of, where males, do, battle for the opportunity to breed the rearing of the offspring is left, for the most part, to the females. In those cases the male is not, so much, seeking the approval of the females, as I believe is seen in humanity, his importance is reduced to being little more than a sperm donor.< This is for the most part correct, but in the case of individual males with vast resources it isn't. As the reference above shows, the gene pool was significantly affected by the ability to control resources, as almost without exception the men who had resources had harems too. What were their reasons for competing and amassing such resources? The truth is it really doesn't matter to the gene pool or the society. The resources themselves served to replace the direct action of the male in defending and providing for his children. We agree that human children are almost unique in the amount of protection and providing for that they need. >>>"...but we are speaking of the "right to marry" as it exists in the civilized world (as opposed to the natural world)...">Are we talking about philosophy or natural sciences?< Probably neither, but definitely not natural sciences. The real focus is the politics of marriage as they relate to the building of a civilization, ie the function of marriage.>Not meaning to be disrespectful, but I am not seeing the connection that any of this has to homosexual equality in modern America. Would you please clarify that for me?< No problem. Many homosexuals feel that the inability to marry a member of the same sex represents an inequality in terms of civil rights. Many others, including myself, feel that the right to marry represents ONLY the right to join with a member of the opposite sex in a socially recognized union, which homosexuals can choose or not, as they like, but which they have no right to change. My reasoning for my view hinges on the value of marriage to the civilization as a whole, as a stabilizing agent, as supported by what I have said above.
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>>>>That's not what I said and you know it. I doubt you were old enough to start much of anything rebellious in the 60's...except maybe a temper-tantrum, if even that. (You too Starfish).
**LOL i wasn't even born in the 60's *wanders off muttering about feeling old and the failure of well known moisturisers* ** :grin:
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In reply to:"The "herd strategy" is an exercise in power in the case of many animals as well. When two stallions, elk or lions fight over territory or females, the most powerful one wins. If they are doing exactly the same thing, does it really matter what their motivations are?"It is my opinion that the motivations in this case is the important deciding factor. Stallions, elk and bison fight individually with each other for the opportunity to breed with a preexisting harem and to exert their dominance over other males. Humanities battles on the other hand tend to be between groups and, most importantly, for control of resources. The important distinction there is that the abundant resources are what allow civilization to develop. In reply to:"The loss of a high percentage (over 20%) of males in a culture due to war is such a rare event you can't truly ascribe anything significant to it in terms of it's affect on polygyny."The loss need be no where near 20% for polygyny to be common within a culture. A minimal loss of males is all that is required to result in several households with a given group to house two or three females. Therefor the effect would seem to be quite germane to argument. In reply to:"...but they also speak of claiming the women as prizes in these events, something a king with a large harem might allow to keep his soldiers pacified and under his control which again fits what I have been describing."The instances of polygyny cited here are a product of civilization and not the reason for it. The taking of females by the males of invading groups was done for political reasons, among them to build cross cultural relationships, provide legitimacy to the occupation, and as mentioned, to keep the invading army willing to follow and fight. Though it could be argued that the females where one of the available resources it must be admitted that their being the reason for invasion is exceptionally rare in recorded human history. The relative inherent promiscuity of humans and the nature abundance, slight though it is, of females to males does not require that males individually fight one another for females. The fight, in the case of humanity, seems always to have been and remains to be, to find new or stockpile natural necessary resources for the support and betterment of his own group.The important point to take form this is that abundance of natural resources is what allowed polygyny to exist and the resources where what men where fitting for control of. Polygyny did not begat civilization (civilization as loosely defined), as I read the argument to be, rather, civilization (again defined loosely) is what allowed polygyny to flourish. In reply to:"The Incas for one. Here in an excerpt from..."I will submit to this citation with some reservation. First and foremost the polygyny here is a product of a civilization with extremely abundant resources. Secondly, I wounder how far this system extended into society. Was it only reserved for the lordly? The problem with the argument, as I see it, is that polygyny is common the world over but exceptional rare within groups it exists. That is to say it is a right reserved for, and, can only be afforded by the ruling class. It is not something common to the majority of members of the group. In a society of a million people where a handful of the ruling class practice polygyny, effecting maybe a few thousand, does it's practise have any real effect or bearing on the society as whole. Politicaly yes, but it certainly has no effect on the overarching group and therefor is not a reproduction strategy, but rather a symbol of status. In reply to:"Again, the motivations of the competitors have little to do with the end result, which turns out exactly the same." and "The institution of marriage and laws governing it among humans provided for the growth of civilizations amid these competitions, whatever the motivation."I must complete disagree on this point. The outcomes are vastly different, where competitors compete as groups for a disproportional amount of the limited natural resources the victor is left with overly abundant resources and thus is able to turn his interest to the building of civilization. Where the competitors compete individually for the opportunity to breed and only adequate resources, that is exactly what they are left with. One method allows the continuing of the species and the development of civilization and the other just allows for the continuing of the species. In reply to:"...but in the case of individual males with vast resources it isn't...as almost without exception the men who had resources had harems too."The number of males with vast resources is to small, relative to the size of any society, to be worthy of any comment on the society at large. While males with vast fortunes may make for a more interesting study they are mute on the day to day people that actually are the society and who's reproductive prerogatives are what actually make the society continue. The rulers who can afford the harems are the anomaly in the society. In reply to:"What were their reasons for competing and amassing such resources?" Power, greater power and insurance for that power. In reply to:"The real focus is the politics of marriage as they relate to the building of a civilization, ie the function of marriage."Pairing-off's contribution, as I think history and anthropology demonstrates, to civilization was that it allowed more stronger and healthier infants within a group to reach maturity. That group adequately equipped with strong young males could exert it's dominance over other groups taking their resources and with this abundance of necessities could then began to look toward building civilization. In reply to:"Many homosexuals feel that the inability to marry a member of the same sex represents an inequality in terms of civil rights. Many others, including myself, feel that the right to marry represents ONLY the right to join with a member of the opposite sex in a socially recognized union...but which they have no right to change. My reasoning for my view hinges on the value of marriage to the civilization as a whole, as a stabilizing agent..."How would homosexual marriage be changing this? If marriage is about stability and people coming together to raise healthy well adjusted children, what does their sexual orientation matter? If the desired end product is stability and family, how does equality in marriage threaten this? If anything wouldn't it promote stability and family to all of society? If homosexuals are allowed to exist in society wouldn't be logical to extend the tools of stability to their "subculture" and thereby bring it more in line with society?
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In reply to:
It is my opinion that the motivations in this case is the important deciding factor. Stallions, elk and bison fight individually with each other for the opportunity to breed with a preexisting harem and to exert their dominance over other males.
Well, that's actually two different motivations which may or may not apply in individual cases, but I see this as irrelevant. It's apparent that we have differing opinions on the importance of motivation.
In reply to:
Humanities battles on the other hand tend to be between groups and, most importantly, for control of resources. The important distinction there is that the abundant resources are what allow civilization to develop.
Battles between groups assume, quite obviously, the existence of groups. The existence of groups is dependent upon some cohesive factor that holds the group together. Familiarity/contact/sex are excellent cohesive factors for smaller groups, such as the Bonobos you compared early humans to. The problem with it is that it is limited in terms of the size of group it can support. You can be familiar with your family and your community, but not your society. For a group as large as a society/kingdom you need something more. Rules/laws are what built societies, and what holds them together today. Without them we would have anarchy.
This being the case, in order for a society to exist in the first place, they would have to have laws which would prevent/control internal conflicts. Then, and only then, would they be cohesive enough to engage another group in a conflict over resources.
One of the laws which holds societies together in the first place is the actual point of this discussion, and it concerns the concept of ownership. Early marriage was seen as a form of ownership. Women fighting over men was rare, but men fighting over women was far more common. In order to face the conflict over resources outside of the group, marriage between a man and a woman (or marriages between a man and several women) were established and governed by law to prevent internal conflict. Then and only then could the group take advantage of the efficiencies of scale to both gather excess resources AND take other resources through conflict outside of the group.
In reply to:
The instances of polygyny cited here are a product of civilization and not the reason for it.
Polygyny is the product of a male having resources sufficient to support multiple wives in a society that doesn't forbid him to do so.
In reply to:
The taking of females by the males of invading groups was done for political reasons, among them to build cross cultural relationships, provide legitimacy to the occupation, and as mentioned, to keep the invading army willing to follow and fight.
We are getting far, far beyond the time period relevant to the concept of marriage, and I am as guilty of the digression as anyone. What you are describing is all likely true, but marriage predates all of these situations by thousands of years.
In reply to:
Polygyny did not begat civilization (civilization as loosely defined), as I read the argument to be, rather, civilization (again defined loosely) is what allowed polygyny to flourish.
Polygyny is too narrow a word. Marriage (of which polygyny is a subset) is the concept that allowed groups to surpass the familiarity barrier and become societies, and societies in turn built civilizations. The excess resources you speak of are a result of the economies of scale, and as groups grew into societies (due to marriage reducing conflict), the excesses became larger. The benefits of these excesses in turn reinforced the validity of the marriage (and the rule of law) concept, as well as provided for the building of civilizations.
In reply to:
I will submit to this citation with some reservation. First and foremost the polygyny here is a product of a civilization with extremely abundant resources. Secondly, I wounder how far this system extended into society.
You are focusing a bit too much on polygyny here. I only provided the cite because you asked me to name a culture in which the "herd strategy" of reproduction took place. I did so, but the issue isn't really polygyny. It's the role marriage played in the building of the civilization.
Far more important is the second part of the cite that you didn't address, where I quoted:
"The first is that many men remain unmated or have only one wife, so male celibacy or at least nonmarital sex is prominent....[ending with]...For access to the mating market, men must bring wealth, power, and land in order to be favorably placed or else get wives as high-risk booty in state warfare (Clarke and Low, 2001; Low, 2000)."I then went on to say, "the real point is that marriage controlled any conflict within the civilization that might have been destabilizing and forced the unmated males to turn their conflict outward in the search for a mate, with only small unorganized exceptions."
This shows the true significance to a society of marriage. It prevents internal conflicts over women. The rest of this is interesting stuff, to be sure, but it's pretty far off-point.
In reply to:
Pairing-off's contribution, as I think history and anthropology demonstrates, to civilization was that it allowed more stronger and healthier infants within a group to reach maturity. That group adequately equipped with strong young males could exert it's dominance over other groups taking their resources and with this abundance of necessities could then began to look toward building civilization.
I got a good chuckle out of this. I was saying that marriage resulted in less conflict, which in turn allowed larger groups and ultimately the building of civilization. You have just said that marriage allowed for more and healthier children, which made for a larger group able to obtain more resources, and thus build a civilization.
We started the same place, and we ended the same place. Yes, we took different roads to get there, but to me that doesn't matter. We seem to have agreed that marriage is ultimately responsible for civilization, whichever road it took.
This has been great. Thanks!
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I've always believed marriage was about love in general, not just a man loving a woman. And about the whole subject of changing the definition of marriage vs. civil unions, what's the big deal? Our society has changed alot since the original definition was created. i don't see why it needs to stay the same so badly.
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In reply to: I've always believed marriage was about love in general, not just a man loving a woman. I've always believed that marriage was about a man and woman in love, but when I really began looking into it, I found I was wrong. Marriage is everywhere on the planet, but using love as the primary criteria for deciding who should marry is a comparatively new Western idea. It's not that way on a planetary scale. The reasons we marry are many and have changed through the centuries, but what a marriage is hasn't.
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I really don't believe imn the bible and never base my opinion on it. I do come to relize that some people are born with different genes including gay. There is nothing a straight fellow can do to prevent it, Being straight, I agree with gay marriage.
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In reply to:
I really don't believe imn the bible and never base my opinion on it.
For the purposes of this discussion, no one is using any references to religion or religious beliefs concerning homosexuality.
In reply to:
I do come to relize that some people are born with different genes including gay.
Actually, that is still inconclusive. Many scientists suspect that there is a genetic component to being gay, and others disagree. Experiments have included postmortem examinations, family lineage surveys, surveys among genetic siblings and twins as compared to adopted siblings, and genetic experiments on insects, fruit flies in particular. Drs Dean Hamer and Simon LeVay are at the forefront of the search for the source of "gayness", but to date they haven't found it, possibly because assuming it exists, it is far more complicated than a "gay gene".
In reply to:
I agree with gay marriage.
Good enough.
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It hasn't been "proven", but evidence for a "gay gene" is accumulating:Some more recent articlesSniffing Out the Gay Gene (Steven Pinker, May 2005)
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Do we have a cell or nerver or w/e the hell is in our brain that controls our sexuality? This would be a good question to ask my Biology teacher, maybe, just one day, I'll stump him!
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Before you posed the question, did you read the articles?The question is, do differences in brain structure and/or chemistry affect sexual orientation? If so, are the differences caused by genetics, environment, or both?Unless your teacher is doing biomedical research on the subject that is leading to some conclusion, he won't have an answer.
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bottom line is if any government that promotes equality and fair play offers marriage to one groupand some other form of union to another group where both groups base their relationships on love, commitment and sex, then that government is being prejudicial. Bottom line is if a government wants to have marriage or civil union or whatevert they want to call it, then it has to apply to all people or none. And when one considers the number of people who marry and divorce, the number who just live together without the ceremony/paper and all the other variations, one has to question why any government would even want to enact civil unions or marriage. Why not just use tax laws to identify when you need to file as a couple and when you don't and once you do, then you are treated as a couple for everything from health insurance to home ownership and all else (and th egovernment simply enacts laws to provide equal rights for any couple once identified on a tax return.In essence that would relieve governments of all responsibility for having to identify whom can marry whom; they merely say if you live together in a mutually supportive, conjugal relationship for 12 (or any random number) months then you are legally a couple. Thus the institution of marriage is left to the churches not to the whims of the lawmakers who have no business telling me who I can sleep with anyway.Now given that no government woudl ever dare dispose of it;s antiquated marriage laws or it's other outdated legislation, we are left with the battle to try to make governments treat everyone equally. And that does not mean marriage for opposite gender couples and civil union for same gender ones. It means we all need to stand up for equality and fair play and demand the governments make marriage for all. Then we need to find a way to make marriages work better so they actually last 'til death do us part.