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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: ...an attempt to redefine marriage [civil partnerships]
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Alisdair
Shipmate
# 15837
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Posted
So, is Cardinal O'Brian standing up for 'marriage', or merely refusing to allow that the Church, or his part of it, doesn't own the brand?
see http://tinyurl.com/7g2j7no
[ 17. May 2012, 23:53: Message edited by: Louise ]
Posts: 334 | From: Washed up in England | Registered: Aug 2010
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tomsk
Shipmate
# 15370
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Posted
Marriage has a Christian meaning and a civil one. For a while these have coincided, but it does not follow that they have to.
Posts: 372 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2009
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poileplume
Shipmate
# 16438
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Posted
My province of Quebec was the second legislation in the world to introduce same sex marriage. The result was a complete non event. The attitude after of the locals is if gays want to get married I could hardly care less.
Posts: 319 | From: Quebec | Registered: May 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
I'm impressed by the dire warnings of something dire. Clearly marriage is important to the foundations of our society so it's important to stop people marrying or such things will happen - we know not what but they shall be the terrors of the earth. Anyway they'll be bad.
I cannot be bothered to dignify the Cardinal's article with sufficient attention to tear it into the shreds it deserves.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
The sky has not fallen in Canada since marriage became defined as something concerning 2 persons. It has meant that same-sex couples can have access to the same things in the event of divorce, access to children, property rights. It has also offered same sex couples responsibilities. It hasn't forced churches to do anything and as far as I know, can't.
As far as I can tell, it means we talk a lot less about it and have moved onto other issues. I sort of thought this was a 'dead horse' sort of issue.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
There's a petition going around my church for the Coalition for Marriage (or whatever they're called).
I'm like ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) So far no one has approached me to sign, so I haven't had to explain loudly and repeatedly why I think I'd rather eat the petition than sign it.
I couldn't give a fig. The argument that letting the gays get hitched undermines marriage is so specious as to be breathtaking in its ignorance.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The argument that letting the gays get hitched undermines marriage is so specious as to be breathtaking in its ignorance.
I agree completely. For all the fuss and hot air, I have yet to see one single coherent argument to support the claim that "gay marriage" somehow manages any other kind of marriage - or that it somehow undermines society.
What is the problem with gays wanting to make vows of life-long commitment to one another? Who on earth would this harm?
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Alisdair
Shipmate
# 15837
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Posted
For the sake of the discussion I would imagine that the argument rests on an understanding that 'marriage' is intrinsically and absolutely between a man and a woman. Anything else cannot therefore legitimately lay claim to the title of 'marriage'.
Can anyone else come up with any other rationale?
Posts: 334 | From: Washed up in England | Registered: Aug 2010
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Then we get on to the tricky and historical argument as to who owns marriage sufficiently to be able to define it.
I would suggest, m'lud, that since whilst the Christian church has recognised marriage without necessarily taking part in its solemnisation since dot, they don't get dibs on it.
The state weighed in around the 1700s. Which is awfully late, too. 'Handfasting' - pretty much one family coming to an agreement with another in good times, and bride-stealing in not so good times - was informal but binding, recognised socially.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
For a long time, marriage was a contract formalising the changed ownership status of a piece of goods, i.e. a woman. Hence all the mumbo-jumbo about "who giveth this woman?", indicating whose property she had been, and who the new owner was.
Presumably, the annoyance about SSM comes from the complainer not being able to decide who owns who, or how big a stick is allowed for use in beating the "unruly property".
I would prefer that marriage was seen as a contract between equals.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Britain's most senior Catholic tells us that, We cannot afford to indulge this madness.
Oh, dear.
Let's see:- small minority of activists
- a word whose meaning has been clearly understood in every society throughout history
- tyranny of tolerance,
- attempt to redefine reality
- indulging madness
- homosexual fairy stories (yuk yuk)
- Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery (another thigh-slapper)
There are good arguments for restricting marriage to one man and one woman, and there are good ways to make them, but this article demonstrates neither.
When Britain's senior Catholic prelate starts baying at the moon with purple prose like this, then one knows his position is utterly lost.
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The RCC redefined marriage in the 12th Century when it made it a sacrament.
Do you really believe that, leo?
[ 04. March 2012, 19:48: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The RCC redefined marriage in the 12th Century when it made it a sacrament.
Do you really believe that, leo?
Council of Trent was 1563?
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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HenryT
Canadian Anglican
# 3722
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Posted
Back when the Supreme Court of Canada was hearing cases on same-sex marriage, the Government lawyers essentially tendered all the "traditional" arguments, and lost, of course. I had this sneaky feeling that they'd been either fighting to lose or instructed to do so. And, if I understand how courts work, those arguments, having been rejected, cannot be the basis of any new suit.
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"Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned" P. Henry, 1788
Posts: 7231 | From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Dec 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
It's a Dead Horse thread, folks.
Off it goes.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There's a petition going around my church for the Coalition for Marriage (or whatever they're called).
That's exactly what they're called. Nasty and rather opaque bunch, very fond of specious arguments and cherry-picked quotes in support of their campaign.
I find it rather cute that he thinks his human rights would be infringed if teh gayz start marrying each other. He's like a hipster who can't stand the idea that the band he likes might become popular.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by poileplume:
My province of Quebec was the second legislation in the world to introduce same sex marriage. The result was a complete non event. The attitude after of the locals is if gays want to get married I could hardly care less.
Canada did, not Quebec. Quebec legalized Civil Unions, not gay marriage. The Constitution Act, 1867 specifically reserves the "definition of marriage" to the Government of Canada, not the provinces. Provinces are responsible for the "Celebration of Marriage". The Civil Marriage Act was one of the few pieces of federal legislation under the Marriage Power as there are very few others. This is also the reason why Ralph Klein could not use the Notwithstanding Clause to nullify the Civil Marriage Act because it was a exercise of direct Federal power.
Quebec had "Civil Unions" but that wasn't marriage and couples had no recourse to the Divorce Act, which is also federal. With the Civil Marriage Act it is questionable whether Civil Unions are constitutional. I believe they are not. When I did insurance training (in Ontario), one of the big points is that civil unions don't exist, it's equal marriage, period. The good thing is that this creates no new legal procedures for those down at the retail level who have to deal with products that use marriage in contract definitions.
As a further point of extreme pedantry, there were a few sections of the Civil Code of Lower Canada, 1866 which passed into Federal jurisdiction under the Constitution Act, 1867. The other areas were Admiralty Law, Banking, Divorce and Bills of Exchange (cheques).
There is a consensus in the Quebec law community as to what sections of the old Civil Code are federal and still stand, the Federal Government has passed a few Civil Code Harmonization Acts to bring its residual civil code sections up to date with Quebec's new Code.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The RCC redefined marriage in the 12th Century when it made it a sacrament.
Do you really believe that, leo?
Council of Trent was 1563?
Trent merely reaffirmed what had been taught from centuries before: that "that matrimony is ... truly and properly one of the Seven Sacraments of the Evangelical Law, instituted by Christ our Lord". Blimey, even Augustine was talking about it being a sacrament - and um, wassiname, erm... St Paul. See here for a pretty thorough historical and theological run-down. Even wiki's not bad.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Trent merely reaffirmed what had been taught from centuries before: that "that matrimony is ... truly and properly one of the Seven Sacraments of the Evangelical Law, instituted by Christ our Lord". Blimey, even Augustine was talking about it being a sacrament - and um, wassiname, erm... St Paul. See here for a pretty thorough historical and theological run-down. Even wiki's not bad.
Interesting reading. What do you make of Wiki's comment:
quote:
Matrimony, for most of Church history, was a sacrament celebrated (as in the Judaic tradition) without clergy and was done according to local customs.
Especially the local customs bit. You could argue that our 'local customs' have changed to allow same-sex marriages.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
What do you make of Wiki's comment:
quote:
Matrimony, for most of Church history, was a sacrament celebrated (as in the Judaic tradition) without clergy and was done according to local customs.
Especially the local customs bit. You could argue that our 'local customs' have changed to allow same-sex marriages.
Not convincingly, though. Allof a sudden changing the actual sex of the partners to a sexual union after centuries of uninterrupted unanimity on that matter is not a mere change in "local customs".
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Allof a sudden changing the actual sex of the partners to a sexual union after centuries of uninterrupted unanimity on that matter is not a mere change in "local customs".
It's plausible that it's equally a change to rule out a change to the sex of the partners. It's not as if the church or society have tried attempts at same-sex marriage and found them wanting. There haven't been attempts at same-sex marriage. In that regard definitively excluding them from marriage is just as much a redefinition as definitively including them.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
All of a sudden changing the actual sex of the partners to a sexual union after centuries of uninterrupted unanimity on that matter is not a mere change in "local customs".
I don't think anyone is arguing a "mere" change. I agree that the change is significant.
But (and please correct me if I'm wrong) if my marriage to equally Protestant Mrs Tor is seen by the Catholic church as valid, but non-sacramental, as it's been conducted under the Benedictine dispensation (civilly valid), what's the problem? No one is changing, or insisting you change, the view of Catholic marriage. That remains inviolate and intact.
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Forward the New Republic
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Honestly, there isn't a single original thing in that article. It's all been said before. And even though I disagree with the sentiments, it's also been said better.
I've already said before on the Ship that a fundamental redefinition of marriage HAS happened, and it has to do with women's rights. Marriage has moved from a man selecting someone to have his babies (therefore he must select a woman) to a partnership between consenting, equal adults.
That shift means it no longer makes sense to deny same-sex marriage, but the shift is not in and of itself about gay rights. Same-sex marriage is merely a logical consequence. Or rather, denying same-sex marriage is no longer defensible on logical grounds.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alisdair:
So, is Cardinal O'Brian standing up for 'marriage', or merely refusing to allow that the Church, or his part of it, doesn't own the brand?
see http://tinyurl.com/7g2j7no
I don't know what his motives are - but he's further undermining the credibility of his Church.
'Marriage is so important that we must refuse it to people we disapprove of.'
Crazy, lacking in logic, uncharitable and living with his head stuck in the eighteenth century.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There haven't been attempts at same-sex marriage. In that regard definitively excluding them from marriage is just as much a redefinition as definitively including them.
I must say, your logic escapes me here. It is pretty much a universal property of marriage as practised from the earliest times that it unites one man to one woman (at a time, at any rate). Never has it been thought to encompass any other pairing. How are Catholics redefining it by reasserting that this is what has always defined it?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I don't think anyone is arguing a "mere" change. I agree that the change is significant.
But (and please correct me if I'm wrong) if my marriage to equally Protestant Mrs Tor is seen by the Catholic church as valid, but non-sacramental, as it's been conducted under the Benedictine dispensation (civilly valid), what's the problem? No one is changing, or insisting you change, the view of Catholic marriage. That remains inviolate and intact.
I don't see the comparison here. There is no problem, as far as I can see, with your marriage or with a Catholic recognition of it. No-one is disputing that your marriage clearly falls within the remit of marriage proper - Catholics could even deem it a sacramental one.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It is pretty much a universal property of marriage as practised from the earliest times that it unites one man to one woman (at a time, at any rate). Never has it been thought to encompass any other pairing.
Hang on. I'm reasonably certain that polygamy was pretty much the dominant practice from earliest times. So much so that Paul had to suggest that a church leader only be married to one woman.
If we're going to debate marriage, let's at least be honest about its historicity.
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Forward the New Republic
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
'Marriage is so important that we must refuse it to people we disapprove of.'
Crazy, lacking in logic, uncharitable and living with his head stuck in the eighteenth century.
No wonder you think it illogical. You haven't been paying very close attention to the argument if you think that H.E. is arguing to prevent couples who could actually do so from contracting a marriage, on the grounds that Catholics "disapprove" of homosexuals: his argument is that two persons of the same sex are not simply capable of being married to one another. You don't have to agree, but you might try to get the argument right before criticising it.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It is pretty much a universal property of marriage as practised from the earliest times that it unites one man to one woman (at a time, at any rate). Never has it been thought to encompass any other pairing.
Hang on. I'm reasonably certain that polygamy was pretty much the dominant practice from earliest times. So much so that Paul had to suggest that a church leader only be married to one woman.
Which is precisely why I added the parenthesis above. One man may have married more than one women, but those marriages were seperate and independent of each other, and only the man an his wife were maried to one another - not all the wives to him and to one another. And I'm not sure about "the dominant practice from the earliest times" either.
[ 05. March 2012, 09:22: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There haven't been attempts at same-sex marriage. In that regard definitively excluding them from marriage is just as much a redefinition as definitively including them.
I must say, your logic escapes me here. It is pretty much a universal property of marriage as practised from the earliest times that it unites one man to one woman (at a time, at any rate). Never has it been thought to encompass any other pairing. How are Catholics redefining it by reasserting that this is what has always defined it?
Attesting universal definitions of anything is inherently problematic. Mariage included. Do you mean just in the Catholic church? If so you may have a point, but different faiths, cultures and people groups throughout the world and throughout time have held a wide variety of different concepts of what marriage is. There is no 'universal' definition, and never has been. And when one group tries to impose its own definition on all, is that right? - even if that group happens to be in the majority?
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No wonder you think it illogical. You haven't been paying very close attention to the argument if you think that H.E. is arguing to prevent couples who could actually do so from contracting a marriage, on the grounds that Catholics "disapprove" of homosexuals: his argument is that two persons of the same sex are not simply capable of being married to one another. You don't have to agree, but you might try to get the argument right before criticising it.
The problem with that argument is that it's bollocks.
If the British civil government create rules for a legally defined institution with the name "marriage" and under those rules, two persons of the same sex can be "married" then BY DEFINITION, two persons of the same sex will be capable of being "married" to one another.
If the Cardinal wants to say "that is not marriage as the Catholic Church defines marriage" then he is quite right, and has the right, to say so. It's not going to be news to any of us. We knew that already.
The British law and the Catholic Church's definitions of marriage are already different, though. The Catholic Church treats marriages between baptised persons differently to marriages between non-Christians, and British law makes no such distinction. The Catholic Church does not recognise divorce as freeing people to marry again. British law does. The Catholic Church is willing to annul (that is, utterly invalidate, ab initio - from the beginning) marriages, even long-term marriages by mature persons which enjoyed public status as marriage and produced children, for hidden defects of intention, in circumstances where British law would insist that the marriage was valid. British law insists on legal formalities and adherence to an age of consent which the Catholic Church views more flexibly. And the remarkable thing is that this has been the case for approximately ever, and no one has much of a problem with it. Some hard cases occur, sure: many non-Catholics don't much like being told that the marriages to which they tried to be faithful are annulled, and many Catholics don't much like the fact that they can't remarry after being abandoned and divorced. But in principle there is no conceptual difficulty in a Church and a country having two different definitions of marriage.
EXCEPT, of course, when it's about the gays. Then the sky starts shaking, and we must urgently attend to the words of the Cardinal, lest it fall.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Given that we are talking about changing the rules of marriage as it is understood in democratic western states, perhaps you can tell me in which western state, culture or society (modern or ancient) marriage has ever been contracted between two persons of the same sex. Examples from non-western cultures may be relevant too. There's nothing exclusively Catholic (or even Christian) about the consideration of marriage as being for people of the opposite sex. Catholics merely recognise what marriage has almost everywhere and always been seen to consist in: the union of a man to a woman.
That seems to be a universal feature of the concept of what constitutes marriage, even amongst and beteween cultures and societies with other very different practices and customs surrounding it. It's not really sustainable to claim otherwise, it seems to me. I certainly see no credible evidence to ourweigh that datum.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
But, Eliab, for the Catholic Church it is problematic that the state does not recognise and practise the same rules for the validity of marriage: indeed, in majority-Catholic states the attempt to introduce civil divorce and remarriage was resisted by the Church. The Church pretty much always lost. Why should that mean the Church should not attempt to fight an even greater difference between herself and the state emerging over marriage now?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There's a petition going around my church for the Coalition for Marriage (or whatever they're called).
I'm like So far no one has approached me to sign, so I haven't had to explain loudly and repeatedly why I think I'd rather eat the petition than sign it.
My church, too. I'm hurt and appalled by it - more so than I am prepared to express here. I do not think that it is at all appropriate for a church to endorse a secular political campaign in favour of continued discrimination against a minority.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It is pretty much a universal property of marriage as practised from the earliest times that it unites one man to one woman (at a time, at any rate). Never has it been thought to encompass any other pairing. How are Catholics redefining it by reasserting that this is what has always defined it?
Hackneyed example: it was thought for a long time that all swans were white. Then we come to Australia and discover a large anserine with a long neck that's black. Do you count it as a swan or don't you? Never has the term 'swan' been thought to encompass any black bird isn't a decisive consideration - it's equally true that nobody has ever considered a bird that fits 'swan' on all other grounds but ruled it out on the grounds of colouration.
Ditto the word 'mammal'. Never had the term 'mammal' been thought to encompass anything that laid eggs, until the platypus was discovered. It was a universal property of all known lactating animals that they gave birth to live young. But that was not considered decisive.
The reason that marriage has been only taken to unite man to a woman is not that people have called rituals that unite a man to a man something else. There haven't been such rituals so they haven't been called anything at all. Just as nobody had made a decision about whether animals both that laid eggs and lactated were mammals before platypuses were discovered, nobody has previously made a decision about whether ritual that unites two people of the same gender is marriage.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It is pretty much a universal property of marriage as practised from the earliest times that it unites one man to one woman (at a time, at any rate). Never has it been thought to encompass any other pairing.
Hang on. I'm reasonably certain that polygamy was pretty much the dominant practice from earliest times. So much so that Paul had to suggest that a church leader only be married to one woman.
Which is precisely why I added the parenthesis above. One man may have married more than one women, but those marriages were seperate and independent of each other, and only the man an his wife were maried to one another - not all the wives to him and to one another. And I'm not sure about "the dominant practice from the earliest times" either.
I do see your point, but I think that we're now into hair-splitting semantics.
Polygamy is not monogamy - and a same-sex couple marrying monogamously have more in common with a different-sex couple marrying monogamously than a man marrying several women in parallel and a man marrying a woman intending monogamy.
And okay, you're not sure how dominant polygamy was, but from at least one ancient text (the OT), it seems more or less the cultural norm.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The reason that marriage has been only taken to unite man to a woman is not that people have called rituals that unite a man to a man something else. There haven't been such rituals so they haven't been called anything at all.
That, if you'll forgive me, is rather my point. If people now want to say that marriage can include two people of the same sex they can ceratinly call it marriage - but that changes what is covered by the epithet so dramtically that practically no-one before the 1960s would have recognised it as anything of the sort, and most peole, it seems to me, still don't. This fact implicitly picks out one of marriage's enduring and I'd say essential properties: the sexual complementarity of the two sexes (and the potential fecundity that flows therefrom).
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Polygamy is not monogamy - and a same-sex couple marrying monogamously have more in common with a different-sex couple marrying monogamously than a man marrying several women in parallel and a man marrying a woman intending monogamy.
I don't agree, for reasons which I think are apparent above.
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
And okay, you're not sure how dominant polygamy was, but from at least one ancient text (the OT), it seems more or less the cultural norm.
Unless there were double (or more) the number of women than men, or unless a woman could be wife to more than one man at a time, how do you work that out? Rich men may have had more than one wife, but surely the vast majority of men must have had just one (and some none). Sheer arithmetic would point in that direction.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The reason that marriage has been only taken to unite man to a woman is not that people have called rituals that unite a man to a man something else. There haven't been such rituals so they haven't been called anything at all.
That, if you'll forgive me, is rather my point. If people now want to say that marriage can include two people of the same sex they can ceratinly call it marriage - but that changes what is covered by the epithet so dramtically that practically no-one before the 1960s would have recognised it as anything of the sort, and most people, it seems to me, still don't. This fact implicitly picks out one of marriage's enduring and I'd say essential properties: the sexual complementarity of the two sexes (and the potential fecundity that flows therefrom).
Forgot to add: it seems to me that no-one would have had any difficulty in accepting that an animal that in every way resembled a swan but was black instead of white would count as a swan, even if the did not believe such animals actually existed. Otherwise, we'd have had peole resisting the classification swan - and instead we had people accepting pretty much straight away that the animlas were swans when they encountered them. This is not the case with same-sex marriage. Here, as a matter of empirical fact, there does seem to be significant resistance to the idea that same-sex partnesrships really could count as marriage as such, and not just from religious groups.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
But, Eliab, for the Catholic Church it is problematic that the state does not recognise and practise the same rules for the validity of marriage: indeed, in majority-Catholic states the attempt to introduce civil divorce and remarriage was resisted by the Church. The Church pretty much always lost. Why should that mean the Church should not attempt to fight an even greater difference between herself and the state emerging over marriage now?
It's blindingly obvious, isn't it? The reason why it would be wrong to impose a full Catholic understanding of marriage on the population of Britain is that most of us AREN'T CATHOLIC. If I want to follow your rules, I can join your Church. Unless and until I do, that Church doesn't have any authority over me.
Why should the Church be especially careful about not confusing civil and religious rules when it comes to laws aimed specifically at giving and withholding rights to a group which Christians have traditionally been somewhat mean to? That's blindingly obvious as well, but I'll let you work it out.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
It's blindingly obvious, isn't it? The reason why it would be wrong to impose a full Catholic understanding of marriage on the population of Britain is that most of us AREN'T CATHOLIC. If I want to follow your rules, I can join your Church. Unless and until I do, that Church doesn't have any authority over me.
I encounter and counter this argument so often, I should have a template at hand ready to post. The Catholic Church cannot IMPOSE ANYTHING on the state or society at large: it can merely put a case in the public forum and hope that it will be heeded by the executive, legislature and electorate at large. In that regard, it is just like any other group/society/organistaion in Britain - except, for example, the CofE, whose bishops can alter and amend legislation in the Lords.
If it is not proper for the Catholic Church publicly to put the case for keeping marriage as it is, why should it be deemd acceptable for groups such as Stonewall to put the case for changing it?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I encounter and counter this argument so often, I should have a template at hand ready to post. The Catholic Church cannot IMPOSE ANYTHING on the state or society at large: it can merely put a case in the public forum and hope that it will be heeded by the executive, legislature and electorate at large. In that regard, it is just like any other group/society/organistaion in Britain - except, for example, the CofE, whose bishops can alter and amend legislation in the Lords.
If it is not proper for the Catholic Church publicly to put the case for keeping marriage as it is, why should it be deemd acceptable for groups such as Stonewall to put the case for changing it?
The reasons why laws are enacted matter. The principles which laws embody matter. They matter in the abstract sense (they reflect the sort of society we wish to be and the values we claim to hold) and they matter in the practical sense (they make a real difference to the way that laws are applied to real people in real situations).
Therefore it is wrong for the GOVERNMENT to impose a marriage code based on principles of Catholic doctrine. The government does not claim the right to enforce belief in or adherence to Catholic doctrine generally, so has no principled reason to enforce marriage law on that basis. My argument was not about what the Catholic church can or cannot properly advocate. It was about what the government can or cannot properly impose.
I almost wrote (but dismissed as an irrelevant aside) the observation that I would respect the Cardinal more if he said what you did: that he wanted the whole Catholic definition of marriage made law. If he had explained how religious difference should make a legal difference, how remarriage after divorce would be banned, how marriages that the world thinks good stand at risk of annulment if one party can successfully navigate the Church's tribunals, and also that gays can't ever marry, he'd at least have been consistent. The rest of the country, including many Catholics, would have told him to piss off, and that would be the end of that.
But when it's just the gay thing? When he's asking the government to enforce Catholic principles in this particular case, even though he knows there is not the remotest chance of the law of marriage embodying Catholic principles on any other point? That's not the honest advocacy of a minority position (like Stonewall's). It's a demonstration that the one deviation from orthodoxy that he really resents is the one that gives gays equal rights. Fuck that.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
The reasons why laws are enacted matter. The principles which laws embody matter. [...]Therefore it is wrong for the GOVERNMENT to impose a marriage code based on principles of Catholic doctrine.
But you think it would be okay for the govenment to change the law to accommodate the Stonewall agenda? Why? And, actually, as I've been saying throughout, it is not just the "principles of Catholic doctrine" that say that marriage is for men and women - it's pretty much the whole history and current majority of human opinion that suggests it.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
My argument was not about what the Catholic church can or cannot properly advocate. It was about what the government can or cannot properly impose.
So it should impose a radical change to the definition of marriage at the behest of a small number of activists but it should not maintain the status quo lest it should placate the Catholics? Seriously?
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
But when it's just the gay thing? When he's asking the government to enforce Catholic principles in this particular case, even though he knows there is not the remotest chance of the law of marriage embodying Catholic principles on any other point? That's not the honest advocacy of a minority position (like Stonewall's). It's a demonstration that the one deviation from orthodoxy that he really resents is the one that gives gays equal rights. Fuck that.
Utterly wrong. It's "just the gay thing" now, because that's what we're being confronted with now. But because we've fought and lost previous battles (e.g., legalisation of abortion effectively on demand - which continue to argue against) you don't think we should be allowed to fight this latest threat to our vaules? As you said, "Fuck that."
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
his argument is that two persons of the same sex are not simply capable of being married to one another.
That's a pretty stupid argument, given that they quite clearly and demonstrably are capable of it. Lots of them have already done it.
Now, the church may well argue that while two people of the same sex can go through a wedding ceremony, declare themselves married (and be declared as such in law) and then live together for the rest of their lives, they can't actually get married. But that has about as much validity in the real world as someone saying that while women can dress up in football kits and kick a football around a football pitch, they can't actually play football.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
And, actually, as I've been saying throughout, it is not just the "principles of Catholic doctrine" that say that marriage is for men and women - it's pretty much the whole history and current majority of human opinion that suggests it.
There was a time when the whole of history and the majority of human opinion suggested that slavery was perfectly normal. That changed. This will change too ![[Smile]](smile.gif) .
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alisdair:
For the sake of the discussion I would imagine that the argument rests on an understanding that 'marriage' is intrinsically and absolutely between a man and a woman. Anything else cannot therefore legitimately lay claim to the title of 'marriage'.
Can anyone else come up with any other rationale?
One that I've heard advanced is a variation of the 'slippery slope-floodgates' argument. ++O'Brien alludes to this in his menage a trois example but the version I've heard is this: once you create same-sex marriages, it's only a matter of time before, say, a zoophile comes forward with a test case saying that he has a basic human right to be married to his dog/ cat/ horse and, were such a 'right' to be enshrined in law and then subsequently 'normalised' (the term of the conservative giving this particular example) by eg: children's fiction having accounts of a man marrying his horse and the two living happily ever after, would not same-sex married partners then feel that that somehow diminished the uniqueness of their own definition of marriage?
An absurd example, perhaps, but perhaps not too much more absurd for a typical con-evo or trad-Cath than two men or two women getting married.
[ 05. March 2012, 15:08: Message edited by: Matt Black ]
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
his argument is that two persons of the same sex are not simply capable of being married to one another.
That's a pretty stupid argument, given that they quite clearly and demonstrably are capable of it. Lots of them have already done it.
Now, the church may well argue that while two people of the same sex can go through a wedding ceremony, declare themselves married (and be declared as such in law) and then live together for the rest of their lives, they can't actually get married. But that has about as much validity in the real world as someone saying that while women can dress up in football kits and kick a football around a football pitch, they can't actually play football.
As a matter of interest, would you say that a brother and sister who go through a wedding ceremony, declare themselves married and then live together for the rest of their lives would be actually maried?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
That's perhaps a better example than the 'one man and his dog' advanced in my post.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
As a matter of interest, would you say that a brother and sister who go through a wedding ceremony, declare themselves married and then live together for the rest of their lives would be actually maried?
Yes, of course they would. That doesn't make it a good idea, of course...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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