No, pad was agreeing with me actually.

km

Yes, he was. The notion that you're oblivious to the irony is entirely mine.

Yup, sorry, a cheap shot - I had the pope at the forefront of my mind when I wrote that .

Meanwhile:


No, no, in this case you're completely wrong - gay men (since you're obviously not including gay women in your statement) are getting equal rights there, because straight/bisexual men aren't allowed into women's associations either . And gay men are getting equal rights there, because they share with women and other men the right to have associations to which only they belong.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here and not assume that you assume gay men as a group have any collective desire to be women, I'm sure it was just an example chosen by you at random. But what's with the apostrophe? Just kidding, I don't really care (about the apostrophe).

There isn't any irony. Typically the Pope offers guidance and the US offers imposition - usually by bombing people into submission. My point was that it wouldn't work with gay marriage.

km

Let me beat you over the head with a Stupid Stick. Here goes ~ My point is that while you object to the notion of America or the Pope or [fill in a blank] imposing their moral views on the rest of the world, you have not even a second thought to the pontificating you practice here regarding gay marriage or alternative forms of conception or [fill in a blank] . . . it's a long list.

No, I'm drawing a distinction between guidance and imposition. Guidance is fine because it can be freely rejected but imposition isn't because it's oppressive.

km

I was just giving one example of an inequality - there's another one that women aren't allowed into men's clubs.


That's not an equal right but an equal exclusion. Six was talking about equal rights not equal exclusions.


Yeah but it shouldn't be allowed because it's sexual discrimination. As I understand it six wants to abolish discrimination.

My personal view is that it makes sense to discriminate in 'harmless' situations to preserve for example women's associations and men's clubs and then again marriage for heterosexuals and same sex civil unions for the gay and lesbian fraternity.

km

That's so - I should have used the word 'treatment' rather than 'rights' in that sentence, since that's what I meant.

As for your latter comment, no significant body of people is disputing the meaning of 'woman' or 'man', and therefore women's and men's organisations are exclusive but not discriminatory (in it's current pejorative sense).

'Marriage', on the other hand, is clearly under question at the moment. To my mind its legal meaning is currently discriminatory inasmuch as it is a reflection of the desire of a portion of the population to have exclusive right to use of that word to describe their union; which said desire has its basis in an imposed conception of moral hierarchy whose basis is religious doctrine not relevant to a significant proportion of the rest of the population. That is, it is implicit/explicit in the current legal definition of 'marriage' in most places in the world that the union of a man and a woman is in some way 'morally' superior and therefore deserves exclusive right to this word to describe that union. This is what is being called into question slowly but surely across different countries of the world.

Well, there's equal treatment with the marriage issue as well - men can't merry men and women can't marry women.


I wouldn't personally use the term in a pejorative sense in relation to associations, clubs or marriage - only in the sense of justifiable distinctions being drawn between those who do and those who don't qualify for membership.


Well that again is a non-pejorative discrimination based upon the traditional meaning of the word involving as it does the consummated union of one man and one woman. Of course a legislature can change the local meaning of 'marriage' to mean a non-consummated union between two adults" but that's got no more to do with equal rights than legislation that changed the meaning of 'women' from "an adult human female" to "an adult human male or female". My understanding of equal rights and moral rights is not that one has rights to an inappropriate word but that there should bs as far as is possible and appropriate equal treatment of persons within and without the definition of the word. Changing the meaning of a word by legislation is rather petty and certainly can't be justified if it's prejudicial to persons affected by its meaning.


I can't agree with that... atheists support marriage as much as persons of religious faith. My rationale for distinguishing between marriage and same sex civil partnerships as created in central Europe for example is neither hierarchical nor founded in religion.

km

When one posts directly below your post, one doesn't need to use the quote feature — especially when it's a one liner — because to most, the reply would be obvious. I really don't think I need you to tell what forum functionality to use or when.

Regarding Vermont, please don't mix war crimes with equality for Gays. And frankly, I doubt if Vermont really cares if the rest of the world agrees with its recent and wonderful legislation or not. They care that the people who benefit by it are satisfied, because they are the ones that matter in this case. And I especially doubt if Vermont gives a crap about your opinion.