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The lolwikiwebz say that handfasting was just basically a public ceremony. Nothin' about having to make critters before you were legally wed.

Besides, this would mean the Church was telling you to have lots of pre-martial sex before you could be married.

Edited, Jun 30th 2010 4:28pm by Jophiel

I have never said this. Ever.

Eh, my knowledge of handfasting comes from medieval romance novels, which are more or less as accurate as Wikipedia on any given topic.

Ignoring your complete idiocy, which I find myself having to do so often when I respond to your posts, let's say for the sake of argument that yes, marriage is an agreement between the couple, while a "state recognized legal marriage is an agreement which is legally recognized by the state". Even then, the argument is for legal equality and consequently, state recognized legal marriage. The only ones here trying to assert otherwise are you and your fellow idiot parade.

Edited, Jun 30th 2010 5:53pm by BrownDuck

So why not have these benefits be awarded upon actually producing the children? The ones that aren't relevant to whether or not a couple will produce children, like visitation rights in the hospital, can be awarded upon marriage as at present. The rest: provide proof of children.

If you can't see why this follows from what you're saying, you're really not paying attention to your own argument.

I still want someone to show me where my tax break is for being married.

Because then it wouldn't act as much of an incentive to get people to marry before producing children.

It's just strange that every time I argue this issue, the primary arguments I get in response are that it doesn't make any sense to do it that way if the purpose is something *other* than what I said it was, usually followed by a number of odd and different ideas about what those benefits could be about. In this case, you are absolutely correct. If we just want to reward people for having children, we'd give them benefits when they have children. But we don't, do we (actually we do, but not in the context of marriage)? Why do you suppose that is? Perhaps it's because thats... not what the marriage benefits are for.

We want to encourage heterosexual couples to marry because statistically, sexual active heterosexual couples will produce children. Full stop. They will produce children. Whether they are married or not. It's a biological certainty. Heck. It's a species survival necessity. Children born to single mothers tend to do poorly and are statistically much more likely to be drains on society. Children born within a legally binding economic contract of some kind requiring the parents to jointly support the child produce the best statistical results for children. Thus, it makes absolute sense to try to come up with a way to get as many of them to enter into said legal agreement (called "marriage") as early as possible. That way we maximize the likelihood of as many children being born into conditions most likely to be beneficial as possible.

Once you understand that, then the whole marriage thing makes sense. If you start instead assuming that the legal status is a "right", and then rush off down some tangent about how denying it to anyone is a violation of their rights, you're going to end out looking at the entire issue backwards and come to the wrong conclusion. The legal status and the benefits it grants was created long after the social and even contractual institution of "marriage" existed. It quite clearly exists for the same reason any other sort of subsidy exists: To encourage certain behaviors. In this case, to encourage people to marry.


Given the reason why we want to encourage people to marry, it makes absolutely no sense to grant that subsidy to gay couples. They're free to choose to enter into a marriage contract if they want, but there is no overriding social need to the rest of us for them to do so. In the same way we might respond to a problem with middle aged men not getting prostate exams by creating a medical subsidy to help pay for prostrate exams. Well, if someone else wants to get one, they're free to, but the need for the rest of us to pay for them to do it isn't there and we aren't violating their "right" to get a prostate exam by not paying for it.


How many other analogies should I use? Farm subsidies? We apply them to the things we want people to grow and not all crops. How about rebates for buying a fuel efficient vehicle? Is it a violation of someone's "right to own a car" if we don't subsidize the purchase of any sort of car? Is this somehow unconstitutional discrimination that we're providing a benefit only if we buy a hybrid, but not a hot rod? The fact is that we do this sort of thing all the time. There are thousands of government programs out there which provide funding for one thing or another. We don't cry "discrimination" on each and every single one, do we?


I'm just kinda floored that something we normally all "get" is suddenly a strange mystery when it doesn't fit a preconception of a political issue. Most people are taught to view the gay marriage issue via the lens of the "right to marry" and nothing else. Thus, even though they would easily be able to recognize the function of a government subsidy in any other case, they are blinded to its presence in this one. What's amazing is that even after I point it out over and over and over, it's like they can't see it. It's right freaking there! Government providing a set of people some benefits if they take some specific action. What do you think that is? It's a subsidy. It's an incentive. Duh! What else could it be?


Understand that and the whole issue becomes clear. I just can't figure out how to explain it more clearly than this.

Edited, Jun 30th 2010 7:28pm by gbaji

It's not an assumption.

A bunch of things. We've discussed them in the past but you can't get past insisting that your assertions are correct and you don't need any evidence or support for them because "It's ooobbbvvviiooouussssss!!!!"

Edited, Jun 30th 2010 9:44pm by Jophiel

No, you just have no idea what you're talking about.

Legally recognized marriage is legally recognized marriage. If there were no "rewards" for being legally married, homosexuals would still seek legal equality. You maintain that it is these "rewards" that are the focus of the issue, when they are not. However, given that such "rewards" do exist for legally recognized marriages, then they should be applied equally across all marriages; sexual orientation is irrelevant.

The issue is not the "rewards" you keep speaking of, but the lack of equality where legally sanctioned marriage is concerned. Your "rewards" are merely a strawman.