And apparently civil unions are a form of oppression, since they do not confer the same rights as a traditional marriage.

I want to oppress everyone equally by defining the benefits a legal marriage confers as a civil union. People would get "civilly united" if you're worried about verbage.

The inverse of that is to remove civil unions entirely, replace them with marriage, and make it impossible for Atheists to gain tax benefits without entering a religious institution.

Or maybe they're a form of oppression because they were specifically created to be a form of oppression.

We already have a word for that. It's called "marriage". People get "married" if you're worried about verbage.

Yes, that would be the simple and intelligent course of action.

I guess if we're talking about one of the places that still bans homosexuals from legal marriage. If we're talking about the United States, then no, they aren't replaced by anything. They serve no purpose, since everyone is already free to marry, so they can simply be discarded. Quick, easy, and painless.

Wow. I'll save you all the head shaking, and simply tell you no, that's not how it works. Not just in your religiously-zealous dystopian nightmare world, but also in the current real world. I know a fair number of married couples who went to the county clerk, filled out some paperwork, and left with a marriage certificate.

No religious institutions are required to be legally married. They haven't been. "Marriage" is the non-religious official legal term.

The only difference now is that the government isn't discriminating against who they'll allow to be legally married. That is: they are no longer discriminating against who can walk into a government building, fill out paperwork, and receive tax benefits. I mean, just in case you weren't aware, churches have always been allowed to give homosexuals wedding ceremonies, and have often done so; the problem was that the government wouldn't recognize it as legitimate, even if it was done through a church (or an entire religion) that explicitly allows for homosexual coupling.

So yeah, this whole conversation about "preserving" the term "marriage" is pretty stupid, in my opinion. It's a legal word, and plenty of people who are "married" have no belief in God and have never stepped foot into the same room as a priest (or any other religious equivalent). You can get married in a solely legal sense, but you cannot get married in a solely religious sense; that's just not what the word means.

There is nothing lost by simply discarding the newer, less wieldy, and obsolete term "civil union". It served its purpose, and now that society is no longer aiming to ostracize/imprison/castrate/eradicate every homosexual person, that purpose has come to an end.

Well that's not true. There are plenty of "marriages" that aren't legal but are recognised by some religion or another. Mormon's polygamous marriages come to mind, but also any other hippy new-age religion that lets you get married to an inanimate object, yourself, a philosophical concept like love itself, etc. Those are all 'marriage' as far as those belief systems go, even if the state doesn't recognise them.

The reason you put "marriages" in quotes is because you're aware that you, along with those who read your post, know that that's not how the word is used, and anyone who says they are "married" without appropriate context and without having any legal recognition is being deceitful.

As an example, if a fruit fetishist "marries" a pineapple, he can go to his fruit fetish meetings and tell everyone they are married, and everyone there will recognize it as legitimate. However, that's because of the context of the situation he's in, in which everyone is willing to pretend they're all married to fruits to make themselves feel more accepted and fulfilled. Outside of that niche circumstance, those people would not tell others they were "married to a pineapple", because they know it isn't true and everyone would quickly remind them of that fact. They wouldn't say they were married on a tax form, because they know they'd go to prison for fraud. The word has a very specific legally-recognized meaning, independent of any religious institution.

Of course, some people will use it to mean other things. But those other things aren't relevant to this conversation. Hey, I just married you. Bam. That's a new kind of marriage you form by replying to someone on a forum. Now we're married. I also executed you. Now you're an executive. Regardless of who here recognizes these statements as fact, it only applies to this niche community, and I wouldn't expect this post to be referenced in a different forum after someone states that people who are executed always die. You can't call yourself "married" unless you're speaking within a context which informs the other person that you aren't actually married.

On a side note, despite popular misconception, Mormons haven't been practicing polygamy for a hundred something years. You have some niche groups who try to say they're "real Mormons" because they think polygamy sounds like a sweet deal and they're mad they weren't born in the right era for it, but the actual Mormon church officially banned the practice of polygamy a really long time ago.

Just FYI you don't have to respond to everything someone says if you're going to purposefully miss the point.

My example was atheists not wanting to get married because they believe marriage to be a religious institution. Are the married couples you know Atheists?
So homosexuals who had a wedding ceremony were not actually married because their local government didn't recognize it as legitimate?

Except for people like me. I feel my freedom is being trampled on because of a word and what I believe to be the word's religious origins. Clearly marriage is not related to religion for you.

Some people don't want to vaccinate their children because they believe vaccines cause autism. Being mistaken or wrong isn't a suitable reason to change law, in my opinion.

For the record, my sister is an atheist and quite anti-religious, as is her husband. One of her friends picked up a marriage license online and married them a few years ago, and they are happily married to this day. But anecdotes are just that - you could pull up a counter-example without effort, I'm sure.

Correct, at least legally speaking. They couldn't have even been recognized under a civil union without doing the paperwork, either.

Lots of words have religious origins. Your freedoms and rights aren't being trampled on because your congressman's first name is Paul or John, which are Biblical names. Your rights aren't being trampled on when a teacher uses a grading rubric for your homework. Lanthanide has been using the word "enlightened" to describe our modern society's progress, and I'm sure you don't take offense to it just because it originates from spiritual understanding.

It's not just Azrael: the word "marriage" is not related to religion as far as the State is concerned as well. There are constructs that only exist in legalized marriage that aren't necessarily tied to religious marriage, and the acceptance of same-sex couples is just another item on the list.

For example, legally speaking, your spouse's family becomes your relatives. Hell, they're called your in-laws! This isn't applicable to any religiously-exclusive marriage (or any other use of the word, for that matter). For the sake of completeness, I'll add that the definition for in-law is "A relative by marriage."

It's not that I don't understand where you're coming from, of course: I would like similar changes to take place, such as removing "In God We Trust" from our currency and "Under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance (both of which were introduced from hysteria against "Godless Communism"). But I've hopefully outlined in my previous posts the reasons why I believe marriage differs from these concerns.

My cousin does this and I think it's the dumbest thing in the world. Lucky for us vaccines help those who get vaccinated and those who don't.

The point here was that I believe the homosexual couple would differ and would say they are married, since their church married them.

Right now, you're trying to convince me of 2 things:
1) Marriage is not religious
2) Changing "marriage" to "civil union" is damaging

I don't think I can be convinced that marriage is not religious, and a significant portion of the population agrees with me. Certainly 600 years ago it was absolutely religious, so much so that people would get married without notifying the government at all and having a purely religious marriage. Since the definition of a word is usually agreed upon by the people who use the word, we can't really be wrong.

I haven't really heard the downsides of changing "marriage" to "civil union" other than it would be a waste of money and time, which may be good enough for some, but not for me. I also believe that by making everyone equal, "civil union" no longer becomes a damaging term. I'm really having a hard time with the cons of changing the term, as I can't think of many that aren't negligible.

Admittedly I don't know many homosexual couples, but I do know enough of them to reply to this.

They're more likely to say "The government won't let us be married." That's at least the case for the couple I personally knew growing up, who would refer to each other as "girlfriend" even though their commitment to each other was recognized by their church. It was probably easier that way because all official documentation had to state that they were single, under penalty of fraud, and calling each other "wife" or "spouse" would lead to confusion because people understand it was (at the time) both not legal and not endorsed by most churches. I would get tired of explaining it each time, too.

This is just another personal anecdote, but hopefully it demonstrates the problems some same-sex couples face and convinces you that your belief is not absolute.

Are you suggesting two entities cannot be distinct from each other because they share a name, or that a word can only belong to a single definition? In either case, I disagree, but I can't respond appropriately unless I know which it is.

A significant portion of the population can be wrong, and in cases like these, it's referred to as a "common misconception". I don't expect you're arguing that there is no legal definition for marriage, but just in case, it's worth pointing out there is, and it is a secular one. Further, that definition is free to change irrespective of the non-secular usage/definition of the word. You ignored my point on religious origins of words being irrelevant, which I'm assuming means you have no argument against it.

Do you see the double-standard you're applying here? You say "marriage" should not be used because of its origins, but "civil union" should be used regardless of its origins.

I have not once suggested changing the name is a waste of money nor time (I had to point this out a couple posts ago as well); even if you think it's a semi-legitimate point, I do not. As for why it is damaging, you may review the second half of this post, which has yet to be refuted.

Has anyone argued up to this point that even if there is a purely secular definition, we should stop using marriage because there is also a widely used religious connotation to it? Can't we, as Lanthanide described, cut ties with the past and history of it, retain the legal benefits for all (equally for gays, straights, a man and his chicken, whoever), and move forward with a new word? To an atheist, marriage may have no religious meaning, but to a huge portion of the country it does, couldn't we just acknowledge that and move on? Wouldn't that make this entire debate pointless, since people who accept the religious connotation get to have their religious ceremony, the state sticks to the "wall of separation" principle between church and state, etc?

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 18 2015, 10:34 pm by Vrael.

I'm arguing that there is a secular definition and a religious one. Mistaking one definition for another is a matter of ignorance.

We can, the ramifications for which we're currently discussing. Also, probably not the best time to try to suggest legalized marriage should default to recognizing bestiality relationships...

These statements cut both ways: they neither advocate nor oppose renaming marriage.

Interestingly this is more or less one of the arguments against homosexual marriage, replacing pineapple with homosexual and fruit fetishist with homosexual.

I am suggesting that in this unique case, we should have a clear separation between church and state by separating the legal and religious terms from each other. We don't have the power to change the religious terms, but we do have the power to change the legal terms. So more the first than the second, but both play a part in my opinions.

As far as common misconceptions are concerned, note the multiple ways we speak the word "often" both with and without the silent "t". Both ways are correct because the common misconception is accepted. My argument is that the word marriage is inherently religious and can be seen as damaging towards atheists. That's pretty much it. I ignored the religious origins of other words because I think it's silly to argue about that because "marriage" is on a different level than "enlightenment". There's not a controversy over the origins of "enlightenment".

Look, I'd be fine if we changed "marriage" to "Holy Matrimony" and left "marriage" as a strictly legal act, but that's not going to happen. I doubt people could forget about the religious origins of the word marriage. I'm positive people will forget about the oppressive history of civil union when the oppression is completely removed. Racial epithets were designed to be hateful. If everyone were called the same racial epithet, I'm sure it would lose most of its meaning. We're already close to changing the definition of "faggot" and "fag" away from homosexuals and towards loose cigarettes and rude people (who ride loud motorcycles). But "civil union" is not a racial epithet and to me the word itself is not hateful (fag is hateful, even towards the rude people), hence why I think we can completely remove the oppression from the situation.

"Marriage" is damaging to willfully ignorant (seems like an oxymoron, but OK) atheists. That's literally the crux of my argument.

So we will hate the gays for changing the definition of legal marriage? I don't see why we can't fix our initial mistake now.

In this case, I actually don't care about other countries or the world. If they don't see the importance of church and state, then that's a problem with their country and we'll gladly begrudgingly take them their children.

Marriage would imply a civil union. Atheist couples who choose to ignore this and just say "married" are free to do that. A civil union does not necessarily imply a marriage, and generally someone choosing that term has chosen to distance themselves from "marriage". For most of the population, nothing would change.

100% disagree. It wouldn't apply to any couples, and many churches will recognize same sex couples as married (even if the couple is non-religious). "Suck it atheists" they'll say.

No, when a gay couples says "married" they mean an ordained minister married them in a ceremony or they don't care enough about the separation to call it a civil union. There is fundamentally no difference between different and same sex legal or religious marriages in the eyes of the law or the Episcopal Church!

see above for semantic restriction rebuttal. To be clear, "civil union" should replace "marriage", which means it would be synonymous for a brief instant while the two coexist at their limits, then would cease to be synonyms when "marriage" gets deleted.

The only reason you wouldn't be married is if you were opposed to the term marriage.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 19 2015, 6:21 am by rockz.

Except an inanimate object is not another person.

I'm not sure what you're saying. As I said, replace the fruit references with homosexual and you have almost exactly the "redefinition of marriage" argument against homosexual marriage; that is, no matter how many people say that homosexuals can be married it is an impossibility based on the meaning of the word.

Well, I don't exactly see the problem here guys. That's what separation of church and state are all about.

The CHURCH still doesn't recognise homosexual marriage. The STATE does recognise it. (Obviously I'm talking about America and certain Christian sects here.) There are lots of governments where it is still illegal. And there are lots of religions that are okay with it too.

See Jack you must realise that cuts both ways.

You have the religious people refusing to recognise the gay marriages, and saying they are not married. And then you have the government saying it is marriage.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 19 2015, 7:51 am by Oh_Man.

Nobody would care if you killed a pineapple. The analogy doesn't make sense.

Pineapples aren't human. Why is it okay to marry other humans but not pineapples? Well, that's outside of the scope of this discussion.


Good thing we can change the meaning. Actually, as I look through the modern dictionary, it's already been modified. So the meaning of the word fits quite well, thank you.

I don't think you understand what I said. The words that were used by Azrael to show why unusual marriages aren't actually marriages are the exact words that a "redefinition of marriage" argument would use. "Polygamy isn't marriage because that isn't what marriage means", "Fruit-marriage isn't marriage because that isn't what marriage means", "Homosexual marriage isn't marriage because that isn't what marriage means". And most of the world would agree with all of those three statements; only in the Western world for the most part have we allowed the last one. In the Muslim and Mormon worlds, the first statement is acceptable but not the other two, and so on. Azrael's argument is essentially in support of the idea that marriage shouldn't be redefined, or can't be. Yet as Sacrieur has said, the word itself has been redefined in dictionaries, if not in people's vernacular, in the Western world. Either it should be possible that the word be redefined to include marriage to inanimate objects/many people/same-sex people/animals/ideas, or the word has only one unchanging meaning that can never be redefined.

Alright, so to both points, then:

1) It is in fact the case that a shared word can refer to completely separate concepts. This is why Wikipedia has disambiguation pages.
2) I mean... almost any entry in a dictionary should tell you it isn't the case that a word can only have one definition.

So a clear separation is formed by the distinctness already present between these two concepts. Legally speaking, using "marriage" has no impact on how marriage is legally interpreted, and it has no impact on who the Church decides to marry.

That's a dialect, not a misconception, and while both dialects are acceptable, that doesn't make them both correct. But I digress.

They have the same origins, and you'd be correct to say there's not a controversy over the origins of "marriage". We all accept that it has religious origins, as does "enlightenment", "rubric", and "Paul". A word's origins, however, do not dictate their legal meaning, nor do they even dictate their modern meaning. "Awful" used to mean "inspiring awe", for example. Someone earlier even brought up relevantly that "gay" used to only mean "happy".

Clearing up the fact that "marriage" does not just mean "holy matrimony as conducted by a religious organization" and has in fact acquired a legal definition since before the inception of the United States is a good thing to do, and it willfully demonstrates not only that we maintain a separation of Church and State, but that it is a founding example of such a separation.

Why is it necessary for the Church to change what they call it? This statement of "Either the Church has to use a different word or the State does, and we can only legally enforce the latter" is a false dichotomy.

Word origins are not forgotten, and that will be the case for both "marriage" and "civil union". Fortunately, I'm not asking to forget about the origins of words: my point is that the word's origin has no bearing on its modern usage, and especially not its modern definitions. If you want to take this argument to support "civil union" (which is less compelling because it does have negative origins), you must also take it to support "marriage" (whose origins are not strictly negative; not any more than the origins of e.g., "Mercury").

If you're looking to desensitize lawful marriage, arguing that using a word one way for long enough causes this desired result is counterproductive to your point. As you argue, "marriage" is not a racial epithet and the word itself is not hateful.

Ignorantia iuris nocet: ignorance of the law is harmful. We should not encourage nor reward ignorance. It seems this is a position where we fundamentally disagree.

I suggest you elaborate, because this statement on its own is a complete misinterpretation of what it was responding to.

So we have a difference in priorities. I detest the "I got mine" mentality and look for the solution that will most likely benefit the greatest number of people.

My position still maintains a strict separation of Church and State, mind you.

If the terms were separated in the manner you propose, marriage would absolutely not imply a civil union. Your whole argument up until now is to separate the two terms to explicitness. Rather than go into that here, though, I'll put my argument into the relevant reply a couple quotes below.

That is an interesting hypothetical. Unfortunately, you cannot just 100% disagree with reality, in which virtually any opposite-sex couple can go to a nearby Church to marry, regardless of their faith. This would, in fact, mean that they could use "married" and nobody would bat an eye.

Until recently, however, same-sex couples had no such option, and their search for an accepting church is still egregiously more challenging than an atheist couple. Them using the term "marriage" to refer to their legal designation would in fact be combated if the legal designation was another name. No, they would have to say "We're civil unioned" in most social situations, or explain every single time they get accusatory eyes that they did manage to find a church that performed a ceremony for them. It would be a prejudice that applies only to them.

You could say it would go away in time, and it indeed would, but not as fast as you'd think, especially with conflicting laws and beliefs outside of the US. This kind of social change is slow and painful. I suspect this may be why New Zealand decided to legalize same-sex marriage rather than exclusively use civil unions.

It's not a guaranteed accurate term unless you're speaking in legal terms, and they will be disregarded as "not actually married" by their peers. To me, this is a believable statement that would be created from changing the legal term:

"Sorry, same-sex 'marriages' don't count; even if you had a ceremony, it didn't receive God's blessing. Please stop using that word: you're infringing on my religious beliefs."

You seem to believe same-sex couples would be free to interchange "civil union" and "marriage" without societal judgment. I suppose this is another area where we disagree, unless you're strictly talking about putting same-sex couples through social torment for decades first, in which case, I disagree that we should. If anything, I'd rather we wait it out for decades and then change it for everyone, once there is no longer social prejudice for couples ready to be freshly exploited, and when there's no longer a misunderstanding around the legal definition of marriage and its separation from any religious entities.

It seems to me that your main position is fairly self-centered. You express a lack of concern around the immediate and lasting social impact, and you outright state a lack of caring about the impression we make on other countries. The crux of your argument, as you claim yourself, is to go forward with reckless abandon because we should cater to those that embrace ignorance. Finally, you justify it all with the argument that it's a matter of separation of Church and State, though this is demonstrably false by the fact that a non-lawful form of marriage already has no bearing on lawful marriage.

Perpetuating hatred and inferiority, even if only temporarily while society adjusts, is not something we should condone for the sake of trying to solve a phantasmal problem of ignoramuses.

---

Marriage has already been redefined throughout the ages. Different religions have different beliefs on marriage. Different countries have different legal definitions of marriage. None of these definitions are wrong, and particularly in the case of marriages in law, the definition is free to update in the same manner that any other piece of legislation is free to update.

An argument presented on the basis otherwise is ludicrous. You're essentially saying the argument people have made in the past, if regarding the legal definition, is ludicrous, and to that I agree.

I already mentioned this in the Shoutbox, but it warrants a formal response here:

1) Polygyny is the controversial form that exists in many (but not all) Muslim countries. However, it makes up a very small percentage (1-3%) of marriages, and modern scholars of the Quran outright reject the practice.
2) Azrael mentioned the reality of this misconception before, but Mormonism has not been associated with polygamy since 1904.

Your examples are all related to religious definitions of marriage in places that suffer from misogyny and other forms of inequality. If anything, it demonstrates that religion cannot be relied on alone to bring equal rights to all peoples. The Western World has caused its religious constituents to adapt to the social changes of the times. Indeed, passages of the "abominable"-described relationship proved a great barrier in the US for same-sex couples to enjoy the same benefits of heterosexual couples under law, as was it a barrier for women's rights when passages of silent obedience or being sold as property were held in higher regard.

Time heals all wounds, as they say.

You missed his point. Azrael's argument is that marriage outside of law is intangible, and therefore legally meaningless. The rights and benefits the State grants to those that file the legal paperwork for marriage, however, are very tangible, and any erroneous injustice in this legal process should be updated, just as any other law we have.

I feel like an analogy is necessary to help you understand the differences. Let's talk about vegetables.

"Vegetable" doesn't have a strict definition: in its vaguest form, "a vegetable is any part of a plant that is consumed by humans as food as part of a savoury course or meal." This is like religious marriage: some marriages are vague and allow polygamy, and some are more strict and only allow a single man and woman. "Botanic vegetable" is a categorization similar to "marriage between a man and a woman", and it would include carrots, broccoli, celery, etc. Now we create culinary guidelines (the law of this analogy) on what vegetables are and how they're used, based around these botanic definitions.

Now the tomato comes along. "A tomato is not a vegetable!" you may exclaim, and indeed by botanic definition you'd be correct: it is a berry fruit, like apples. However, it resembles a vegetable so well - even though the botanical definition may reject it, we definitely recognize it as a culinary vegetable.

So we recognize a tomato as a vegetable in the culinary world, even though dogmatic botanists will insist that it is not a vegetable. And you know what? That's perfectly fine. A tomato can be a vegetable in the eyes of the culinary arts, even if botany doesn't recognize it as such. Respectively, same-sex couples can be married in the eyes of the law, even if (some) religion doesn't recognize it.

And the botanists shall cry, "What's next? Will you start calling beef a vegetable now? Will sawdust become a vegetable?!"

To which the culinary world shall reply, "Not today."

Post has been edited 16 time(s), last time on Aug 21 2015, 1:47 am by Roy.

Go back as far as you want and you won't find a consensus on what the word marriage actually means; from an anthropological view it has a pretty wide and varied meaning. Your carrying on a pretense like there's some one true meaning of the word that's "man and woman" is unsubstantiated. Even from a legal view it's varied from "one man and one woman" to "one man and several women". And from a religious view its far murkier as it could mean anything (such as any number of pineapples and any number of people).

Even if you wanted to claim that it has only religious origins, you would be completely wrong. In Buddhism, for instance, marriage has always been viewed as secular. Jaianism, which predates Christianity, Islam, and pretty much every other religion still practiced by more than a hundred people, has the same view that Buddhism does: that marriage is a purely secular affair.

In any case this is all pedantic, because even if there were one true unshakable meaning of the word marriage, the state would still have every right to redefine it for its own legal purposes and even have a moral obligation to do so, since the very basis of the American government is that all are equal in the eyes of the law, and that no two people share any advantage over the other.

You can fall back on whatever silly fallacious argument that you want, which Az and Roy have graciously spending their time rebutting, but it won't change the unassailable truth that if you really cared about equality this wouldn't be up for debate. But instead you wish that some are treated better than others by the law. That's true injustice. And anyone who believes that we should cater to someone's sensibilities so that one group can be treated better than another ought to be ashamed of themselves. Whether or not we're redefining marriage is irrelevant: only that applies equally to everyone is relevant.

And if at any point in time pineapples become people under the eyes of the law, then they too should be permitted the same equal rights as every other person.