2004 Presidential Election.

[Will]

There is a problem with the murder argument, though. I've heard it before, sometimes with "murder", sometimes "rape", sometimes "kiddie porn", and on and on, pretty much always something everyone who is considered sane believes is a very Bad Thing(tm). Then they say, replace this Bad Thing(tm) with gay marriage, and there is your argument for it!

Wrong.

When you do such substitutions, you're assuming that either A) the things being substituted have all the same properties as far as the argument is concerned, or B) the argument is a tautology. The "murder" argument easily disproves B. Then what of A? What are the properties of all these Bad Things(tm)?
Murder - one person depriving another person of life
Rape - one person depriving another person control over the body sexually
Kiddie Porn - one person depriving a previously innocent youth of innocence, in addition to depriving control over the body sexually

And gay marriage? Can anyone seriously make an argument that two people who love each other cannot make such a bond between themselves? All I have heard simply is an "I don't like it" argument. Well I don't like racists, Nazis, lawyers, marketing executives, insurance salesmen, circus clowns, or albinos. But they have never done anything to me personally, I just decide I don't like them. Therefore, if I can convince enough people that they don't like those things either, it may be decreed through government that those people shall not have rights under this government. This will undoubtably make me and many other people happy; that doesn't make it right or good.

A lot of people don't like homosexuality. It makes them uncomfortable. Gay people have never done anything to them, it's just they aren't liked. Therefore, if it turns out there are enough people who don't like homosexuality, it may be decreed through government that those people shall not have rights under this government. This will undoubtably make homophobics happy; that doesn't make it right or good.

Another mistake is saying that all things which are dealt with in religion cannot be dealt with in government. With many religions, a form of government is already built in. Exhibit A, the Catholic Church. When you look at the clause "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", there is nothing in there saying there is no overlap in domain. Religion or lack thereof is a central part of every person. So is living, and living in society kind of implies that one is living under at least one government. If one is living under more than one, then it is expected that the person will be restrained a little more in what they can do, while getting the benefits provided from both. There is no conflict in the Constitution as long as the "government" of religion does not interfere with the functioning of the State, and the functioning of the State does not interfere with the functioning of the Church. In other words, the Bible can say "murder is wrong", the US Government can say "murder is a felony punishable by X years in prison"... and there's no conflict! Or, religions can say "marriage is a sacred union between only a man and a woman", and the US Government can say "marriage is the union of two persons for purposes of taxation, inheritance, visitation, etc"... and there's still no conflict! There's no forcing of people to marry someone of the same sex. There's no forcing of people to marry someone of the opposite sex. There's no forcing to marry, period.

As for the "hypothesis" of marriage... ok, if you're taking the position that marriage started with the story of Adam and Eve in Eden from Judeo-Christian mythology, then of course marriage wasn't co-opted into religion. But even when I believed in that stuff as a kid, I thought of it more as fables than actual history, just like I didn't really believe that Jack climbed up a magical beanstalk to steal from the Giant in the sky. So that bit is only valid for those that have a similar view of that and all similar stories of origins of man, etc.. It is merely supporting evidence, and is not necessary to the argument as a whole.

[Jack Simth]

Will said:
There is a problem with the murder argument, though. I've heard it before, sometimes with "murder", sometimes "rape", sometimes "kiddie porn", and on and on, pretty much always something everyone who is considered sane believes is a very Bad Thing(tm). Then they say, replace this Bad Thing(tm) with gay marriage, and there is your argument for it!

Wrong.

When you do such substitutions, you're assuming that either A) the things being substituted have all the same properties as far as the argument is concerned, or B) the argument is a tautology. The "murder" argument easily disproves B. Then what of A? What are the properties of all these Bad Things(tm)?
Murder - one person depriving another person of life
Rape - one person depriving another person control over the body sexually

Both assume some particular definition of person, which is very religion-like, if not necessarily precisely religious. Should the government be able to dictate what is and is not considered a person? If no, then you can't charge a solipsist with murder or rape; if yes, then it can easily become quite reasonable to put an abortionist on trial for murder.

Will said:
Kiddie Porn - one person depriving a previously innocent youth of innocence, in addition to depriving control over the body sexually

That applies to the extreme of kiddie porn - some jerk sticking it in a five year old - it does not necessarily apply to a twelve-year-old doing a strip-tease in front of a camera for cash (which is basically what the various task-forces trying to take down the kiddie-porn recruiters fish for).

Will said:
And gay marriage? Can anyone seriously make an argument that two people who love each other cannot make such a bond between themselves? All I have heard simply is an "I don't like it" argument.

So you've never heard the long-term social stability question? What's the longest a society that was founded with exclusively (or nearly so) "traditional" marriage has survived after "non-traditional" marriges have become widespread? According to one source I've heard (granted, he was a televangalist, and is biased - but then again, everybody's biased to some degree - doesn't necessarily mean that their data is false) was three generations. Now consider the Jews. Theirs is pretty much the only culture that has survived relatively intact through multiple millenia of subugation and persecution (of varying severity, granted). They have a lot of rules - religious rules that they live by - which include such things as sanitation, a ban on incest, and a ban on eating pork, to name three. Now, in modern times, we find that many of these are actually extremely practical health concerns. Thanks to an understanding of germs, we know that people who don't wash regularly are considerably more likely to contract diseases. Thanks to an understanding of genetics, we know that the childeren of incest are considerably more likely to have defects from negative-recessive gene pairs. Thanks to an understanding of biology, we now know that pigs contain a parasite which pigs are immune to, but is devastating to humans if the parasite gets into their systems (sure, it's not certain that you will catch it if you eat pork that still has some surviving parasites, but essentially all pigs carry that parasite, and barring some rather unusual circumstances, eating pork is the only way to pick it up). Many of their practices are present and required (in some form) in most modern societies - theft, murder, rape, a weekly day of rest, and incest laws, to name a few. Whether you assume their laws were handed down to them by God, or that they evolved over a given length of time as survival factors for a society, it's a bad idea to start dropping portions that are integrated into your society without first running long-term field tests.

Will said:
Well I don't like racists, Nazis, lawyers, marketing executives, insurance salesmen, circus clowns, or albinos. But they have never done anything to me personally, I just decide I don't like them. Therefore, if I can convince enough people that they don't like those things either, it may be decreed through government that those people shall not have rights under this government. This will undoubtably make me and many other people happy; that doesn't make it right or good.

A lot of people don't like homosexuality. It makes them uncomfortable. Gay people have never done anything to them, it's just they aren't liked. Therefore, if it turns out there are enough people who don't like homosexuality, it may be decreed through government that those people shall not have rights under this government. This will undoubtably make homophobics happy; that doesn't make it right or good.

Their's no attempt (that I'm aware of, anyway) to prohibit them the vote; they aren't being prohibited free speech; they aren't being systemically executed; killing them is still murder; they aren't being prohibited to engage in commerce; they aren't being prohibited to hold jobs (for the most part - there is the military exception to that - but the military is, of necessity, extremely pragmatic when dealing with problems - it's much more efficent to remove the 2% that cause 50% of those around them to lose efficency than it is to train the 50% to not be bothered by it). It's not the blanket denial of rights that your statement above could easily be read to imply. In some ways it's more of a preservation of the language - an object designed to be sat upon with four legs and a back is not a chalkboard; a large, flat chunk of slate mounted on a wall and designed to be repeatedly written on and erased is not a chair; two men in love is not a marriage. In some ways it's trying to prevent a slippery slope - if two men in love can be a marriage, why not three men in love? Or one man and three women? Or a forty-year old man and a thirteen-year old girl? Or ...?

Will said:
Another mistake is saying that all things which are dealt with in religion cannot be dealt with in government. With many religions, a form of government is already built in. Exhibit A, the Catholic Church. When you look at the clause "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", there is nothing in there saying there is no overlap in domain. Religion or lack thereof is a central part of every person. So is living, and living in society kind of implies that one is living under at least one government. If one is living under more than one, then it is expected that the person will be restrained a little more in what they can do, while getting the benefits provided from both. There is no conflict in the Constitution as long as the "government" of religion does not interfere with the functioning of the State, and the functioning of the State does not interfere with the functioning of the Church. In other words, the Bible can say "murder is wrong", the US Government can say "murder is a felony punishable by X years in prison"... and there's no conflict! Or, religions can say "marriage is a sacred union between only a man and a woman", and the US Government can say "marriage is the union of two persons for purposes of taxation, inheritance, visitation, etc"... and there's still no conflict! There's no forcing of people to marry someone of the same sex. There's no forcing of people to marry someone of the opposite sex. There's no forcing to marry, period.

By the exact same token, there is no conflict if religion says "marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman" while the state says "marriage is the union of a man and a woman for purposes of taxation, inheritance, visitation, et cetera". Yet your initial argument was that the state defining marriage as being a union between a man and a woman was wrong.

[Will]

I've heard the long-term social stability argument. I think it's bunk, conveniently looking at certain civilizations that were either already in decline, or about to enter it, then extrapolating that homosexuals caused it. While at the same time ignoring the Greeks, and other Mediteranian civilizations where it was relatively common for there to be homosexual relations (about as common as it is now, or more, as far as I can tell). They certainly didn't begin to fail after "three generations". I think an argument used by one of my old english teachers to demonstrate logical fallacy covers this argument pretty well: "During the summer, people tend to eat more ice cream. People also tend to drown more often. Therefore, ice cream causes people to drown." Two things that can barely be said to be related, and causality infered from that.

Slippery slope. Another logical fallacy. Next.

As far as the restricting of rights, as it stands now, gay couples are not allowed to file joint tax returns, they are not allowed hospital visitation rights, there is no automatic inheritance, etc. Many rights afforded to opposite-sex couples are denied to same-sex couples. The amendments being thrown about propose to make this permanent. Now if you are talking about an amendment that simply says a same-sex couple cannot use the term "married" to describe themselves, that takes away the issue of rights, true. But it still has problems. For one, it is putting the country through a difficult legal process to essentially define a word. I would like to see you propose an amendment banning the usage of the word "chalkboard" to describe an inanimate object usually with four legs used for a person to sit in. It's useless, pointless, and... it's not what the amendments are going for in the first place. Semantics are not the issue for the people proposing the amendments, the issue is "We don't like the fags". And that is just ugly.

As for definition of "person"? What makes the definition "religion-like"? I see no reason why there cannot be a secular definition of "person", and I'm pretty sure everyone has a more-or-less secular definition in their head when they think of "person". The religious stuff is pretty much reserved for terms like "soul", "spirit", etc. Government doesn't dictate what is or is not a person because it is simply understood. If that's not enough for the pedants out there, how does "one of the species Homo sapiens sapiens" work for them?

And how exactly have you decided to sneak abortion into this? I was arguing that same-sex couples should have the same rights and responsibilities as opposite-sex couples. Never brought up abortion. It's a completely seperate issue as far as I'm concerned.

[rextorres]

A simpler and more apt analogy would be the issue of interracial marriage.

A lot of the same arguments that were used in the past to justify banning interracial marriage are now used by the very same types of people to justify banning gay marriage.

[Instar]

Jack Simth said:
Bearing in mind, that this is a question of ethics, and as such is fundamentally unarguable on several levels, here is a roundabout and incomplete attempt at one:

Let's start with something else. Something that the supermajority...

Argumentum ad populum. logical fallacy.

Jack Simth said:
...of people believe is wrong: Murder. Murder is illeagal. ...

No, murder is a wrongful killing. By definition, murder is wrong. Sorry to argue semantics, but that is the correct definition.

Jack Simth said:
...It is also called wrong in the Bible. ...

Relevance?

Jack Simth said:
... Obviously, murder is a religious issue, ...

No, actually, it is not.

Jack Simth said:
and the state has no right to intervene. Perhaps it is an ethical issue, instead. With ethics, things ultimately lie on fundamental, unproveable assumptions ...

Not so. Ethics makes very few assumptions. The assumptions made in ethics usually pass the reasonable person test, that is, thigns a sane person would agree to.

Jack Simth said:
...(some samples: with Kant's "pure logic", one must first assume: 1) that logic is applicable to ethics, 2) that "better" is something to be strived for, and 3) Kant's definition of what has intrinsic value; with self-interest or extended self-interest ethics, one must first assume that personal consequences matter in questions of ethics [not a given in all schools of ethics]; "feels good" ethics usually assume that it either doesn't matter anyway or that nature/God/whatever has provided the ultimate guide when producing your feelings (or that it is an evolutionary process, and if your ethics are flawed, they are supposed to cause you problems), or some variant; with God centered ethics, even assuming that the existence of God and every event statement in the Bible is wholly accurate in every detail, one first needs to assume that the created ethically ought to obey the rules laid out by the Creator; et cetera; et cetera), which are religion-like in nature. Murder penalties are therefore unconstitutional, and thus the state has no right to interfere on that basis.

You can replace "murder" in the above with virtually anything that's illeagal (with minor tweaks to the rest of the text), really - (in no particular order) rape, incest, theft, drug abuse, tax evasion, kiddie porn, gay marriage, or prostitution, to name a few. The above is complete bull, of course. But how can the case be argued that it IS bull? More specifically, can you debunk the above for murder, rape, incest, theft, kiddie porn, et cetera without also debunking the above your favorite issue: gay marriage, especially considering that it uses a good portion of the same basic approach that you used to say that gay marriage should be okay?

This is crap dressed up as philosophical musings. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you misconstrue ethics completely.

Jack Simth said:

That is one hypothesis. It isn't proven, however.

You're saying that one can equivocate murder with gay marriage. Equivocation is a logical fallacy.

[Instar]

Jack Simth said:
Both assume some particular definition of person, which is very religion-like, ...

What? Defining a person is not religious at all. A living human being is considered a person.

Jack Simth said:
... if not necessarily precisely religious. Should the government be able to dictate what is and is not considered a person? If no, then you can't charge a solipsist with murder or rape; if yes, then it can easily become quite reasonable to put an abortionist on trial for murder.

That applies to the extreme of kiddie porn - some jerk sticking it in a five year old - it does not necessarily apply to a twelve-year-old doing a strip-tease in front of a camera for cash (which is basically what the various task-forces trying to take down the kiddie-porn recruiters fish for).

So you've never heard the long-term social stability question? What's the longest a society that was founded with exclusively (or nearly so) "traditional" marriage has survived after "non-traditional" marriges have become widespread? ...

Anecdotal, and a VERY skewed view of history. There is not a single shred of historical evidence that equates gay marriage to the downfall of society. This line of argument is bunk.

Jack Simth said:
According to one source I've heard (granted, he was a televangalist, ...

Appeal to authority. A televangalist[sic?] is hardly an authority on anything, other than milking the gullible of cash in the name of the Lord.

Jack Simth said:
... and is biased - but then again, everybody's biased to some degree - doesn't necessarily mean that their data is false)...

Yes, actually, it does. I call this evanglist's evidence into doubt. His evidence is more than likely anecdotal and very skewed.

Jack Simth said:
... was three generations. Now consider the Jews. Theirs is pretty much the only culture that has survived relatively intact through multiple millenia of subugation and persecution (of varying severity, granted).

The Irish have Lasted quite a long time under subjugation (up till the 1700s I would bet!). This has hardly any relevance...

Jack Simth said:
They have a lot of rules - religious rules that they live by - which include such things as sanitation, a ban on incest, and a ban on eating pork, to name three.
Now, in modern times, we find that many of these are actually extremely practical health concerns. Thanks to an understanding of germs, we know that people who don't wash regularly are considerably more likely to contract diseases. Thanks to an understanding of genetics, we know that the childeren of incest are considerably more likely to have defects from negative-recessive gene pairs. Thanks to an understanding of biology, we now know that pigs contain a parasite which pigs are immune to, but is devastating to humans if the parasite gets into their systems (sure, it's not certain that you will catch it if you eat pork that still has some surviving parasites, but essentially all pigs carry that parasite, and barring some rather unusual circumstances, eating pork is the only way to pick it up). Many of their practices are present and required (in some form) in most modern societies - theft, murder, rape, a weekly day of rest [Not so. Blue laws are gone in the US, and were immoral to start with], and incest laws, to name a few. Whether you assume their laws were handed down to them by God [God's laws include ones that allow me to rape and get away with it for 50 silver pieces...], or that they evolved over a given length of time as survival factors for a society, it's a bad idea to start dropping portions that are integrated into your society without first running long-term field tests.

How convienent that you mention field tests. Guess what?! Many countries overseas have allowed gay marriage for quite some time. The society hasn't crumbled at all!
So, according to you, immoral and wrong laws ought not be dropped without running tests? Laws prohibiting interracial marriage are quite obviously wrong, but you come out in favor of them with this argument. You're only hurting yourself with that position.

Jack Simth said:

Their's no attempt (that I'm aware of, anyway) to prohibit them the vote; they aren't being prohibited free speech; they aren't being systemically executed; killing them is still murder; they aren't being prohibited to engage in commerce; they aren't being prohibited to hold jobs (for the most part - there is the military exception to that - but the military is, of necessity, extremely pragmatic when dealing with problems - it's much more efficent to remove the 2% that cause 50% of those around them to lose efficency than it is to train the 50% to not be bothered by it). It's not the blanket denial of rights that your statement above could easily be read to imply. In some ways it's more of a preservation of the language - an object designed to be sat upon with four legs and a back is not a chalkboard; a large, flat chunk of slate mounted on a wall and designed to be repeatedly written on and erased is not a chair; two men in love is not a marriage. In some ways it's trying to prevent a slippery slope - if two men in love can be a marriage, why not three men in love? Or one man and three women? Or a forty-year old man and a thirteen-year old girl? Or ...?

The "slippery slope" argument is crap.

Jack Simth said:

By the exact same token, there is no conflict if religion says "marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman" while the state says "marriage is the union of a man and a woman for purposes of taxation, inheritance, visitation, et cetera". Yet your initial argument was that the state defining marriage as being a union between a man and a woman was wrong.

[Jack Simth]

Instar said:

Argumentum ad populum. logical fallacy.

So choosing a starting point where most there is a high probability of a match as a starting point to argue from is automatically a fallacy? Interesting definition you have there.

Instar said:

No, murder is a wrongful killing. By definition, murder is wrong. Sorry to argue semantics, but that is the correct definition.

A minor point of semantics there - call it randomly killing someone is wrong. It's pretty immaterial nit-picking.

Instar said:

Relevance?

No, actually, it is not.

Apparently you missed a chunk of the conversation - Will was basically saying that the state shouldn't be allowed to restrict marriage to one man and one woman on the basis that it was a religious issue; it's a religious issue because it is defined Biblically. Murder is also defined Biblically, and it's not an strickly cultural issue because there are vastly different definitions of it in different cultures.

Instar said:

Not so. Ethics makes very few assumptions.

I didn't say they made many of them; I said they made Fundamental assumptions; the use of fundamental usually implies a small number of them.

Instar said: The assumptions made in ethics usually pass the reasonable person test, that is, thigns a sane person would agree to.

Except, of course, that many of the schools of ethics disagree on those selfsame assumptions - Kantian ethics would ignore feelings as much as possible, on the assumption that reason is the best guide to ethics, as it is all that separates man from beast, and that nature hasn't provided an essentially perfect guide in our emotions. Meanwhile, there are a number of emotional schools of ethics that take the exact opposite approach, saying let your feelings guide you. Both types of school contain reasonable people, yet they can easily disagree on their assumptions. Moreover, they can never really convince each other, as both cases are fairly reasonable and there can't really be any true evidence on such a fundamental level. Further, they come to different conclusions in the end - sure, they all agree on the obvious things (a fourty-year old man in good health is a person; a rock is not), but they disagree on the nitty-gritty (Are monkeys people? Are unborn human children? Eating meat okay? Be a vegitarian? A veagan?).

Instar said:

This is crap dressed up as philosophical musings. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you misconstrue ethics completely.

Being insulting now? Is that what you are reduced to? There's no point in continuing this, then, is there?

[Instar]

Jack Simth said:

So choosing a starting point where most there is a high probability of a match as a starting point to argue from is automatically a fallacy? Interesting definition you have there.

Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy. Just because 99% of people agree that something is right/wrong does not make them right. And I don't understand what the heck you wrote there at all.

Jack Simth said:
A minor point of semantics there - call it randomly killing someone is wrong. It's pretty immaterial nit-picking.

Like I said, sorry. But if we are to talk about philosophical ideas and such, we must use proper terminology and definitions. It is a habit from writing my philosophy papers.
[quote]
Jack Simth said:

Jack Simth said:
Apparently you missed a chunk of the conversation

Yes, I realize that now.

Jack Simth said:
- Will was basically saying that the state shouldn't be allowed to restrict marriage to one man and one woman on the basis that it was a religious issue; it's a religious issue because it is defined Biblically. Murder is also defined Biblically, and it's not an strickly cultural issue because there are vastly different definitions of it in different cultures.

I didn't say they made many of them; I said they made Fundamental assumptions; the use of fundamental usually implies a small number of them.

Except, of course, that many of the schools of ethics disagree on those selfsame assumptions - Kantian ethics would ignore feelings as much as possible, on the assumption that reason is the best guide to ethics, as it is all that separates man from beast, and that nature hasn't provided an essentially perfect guide in our emotions. Meanwhile, there are a number of emotional schools of ethics that take the exact opposite approach, saying let your feelings guide you. Both types of school contain reasonable people, yet they can easily disagree on their assumptions. Moreover, they can never really convince each other, as both cases are fairly reasonable and there can't really be any true evidence on such a fundamental level. Further, they come to different conclusions in the end - sure, they all agree on the obvious things (a fourty-year old man in good health is a person; a rock is not), but they disagree on the nitty-gritty (Are monkeys people? Are unborn human children? Eating meat okay? Be a vegitarian? A veagan?).

Being insulting now? Is that what you are reduced to? There's no point in continuing this, then, is there?

Well, I "called it as I saw it". With the ridiculous equivocation you were making (gay marriage is as bad as murder somehow), there wasn't a shred of decent logic there.

I would say that gay marriage is ok, because of Rule Utilitarianism and the Liberty Principles. There is not enough justification to make it illegal (Liberty Principles). I cannot think of a good ethical system that would condemn it.

[Jack Simth]

Instar: You ceased to be civil so I ceased to participate in this discussion. Have a nice day.

[Will]

Jack Simth said:
Apparently you missed a chunk of the conversation - Will was basically saying that the state shouldn't be allowed to restrict marriage to one man and one woman on the basis that it was a religious issue; it's a religious issue because it is defined Biblically. Murder is also defined Biblically, and it's not an strickly cultural issue because there are vastly different definitions of it in different cultures.

Jack, sorry, you must have missed a chunk of the conversation. I've been saying that the State shouldn't be restrictive of its definition of marriage, because it is not really a religious issue. The workings of marriage for a government have absolutely nothing to do with religion. Just because religion happens to deal with the same concept doesn't mean you get to force your religion's concepts on everyone else. That's why the whole "respecting the establishment thereof" bit was in the First Amendment. I'm sure you would be in an uproar if the situation was reversed, and Somebody Else's Religion(tm) was used by the government to dictate how your life could be led contrary to your religion.

The so-called social stability problem is a non-issue, so there is no reason for a gay marriage ban unless it is religious, or rooted in ignorance. The latter is simply wrong because it has no basis. The former is essentially imposing segments of a religion on people who do not need or want to accept that religion. In other words, it is not harming you if what you consider an immoral action is legal, but it does harm same-sex couples if what they consider moral and good is made illegal based on Someone Else's Religion(tm).

And Jack, I don't see how Instar was not civil to you. Perhaps not civil to your arguments, but IMHO those arguments are not very good ones. I've heard them all before, they weren't good then, they aren't good now, and frankly, the position does not deserve respect. That does not mean the person is not respected. If I am missing a personal attack in there somewhere, please point it out, but as of this moment, I don't see it.