"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down." (Robert Frost).

So km, basically what you're saying is: 'marriage' is The Heterosexuals Club, and therefore in your view that club should have a legally protected right to vet its membership.

Speaking as the ex-treasurer of a couple of charities, all I can say is they'll have to be very, very careful who they vote onto the board of trustees if they want to hang onto their constitution in that form. They'll get into trouble with the Charity Commission anyway if they're not careful, since it's not considered conscionable to exclude membership from a club on the basis of sexual orientation. They could learn a thing or two about tolerance - christians are allowed in gay bars, for example.

"Writing free verse is like playing Bartók with the net down - depending on what you're trying to play, a net may be irrelevant..." (me, actually)

No I wouldn't describe marriage as a club at all because anyone can enter into it... no, the analogy I'm drawing is linguistic i.e. certain terms have universally accepted meanings so that 'marriage' for example means the 'consummated union of one man and one woman', 'women's association' means an association to which adult human females alone have a right of membership and 'mixed doubles' means a racquet sport contest between teams comprising one member only of each sex.

km

Well which is it?

Or,

*Which, obviously — and whether or not you like it — is changing, even if only one state at a time.

What do you mean which is it? Both.


Personally I couldn't give a monkeys - no one's going to take any notice of it over here.

km

Projecting yourself on the whole of England now are you? is going to take any notice? Show me how that works, eh? I had to go back five months to answer your incessant harping on one of your obsolete peeves, but I found it. So now you'll return the favor by backing up this statement, right? I mean, isn't that how the "big boys" argue? Prove to me that "no one" will take any notice of several U.S. states legalizing same-sex marriage in the past week. Or is that too deep a pool for you to swim in?

In England same sex marriages are void: Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, s11(c).

km

So because, according to some increasingly irrelevant, dust-covered piece of parchment, no one will take notice? Because of a 36-year-old POV, same-sex marriages elsewhere in the Free World are invisible? Are we now to see a movement of Gay Marriage Deniers? Are we to believe that the UK is that backward and that isolationist that forward-thinking, equality-seeking individuals need not apply for visa or citizenship?

I give your country and your gov't far more credit than that. And far far more credit than I give you. But it wouldn't surprise me to one day see legislation introduced in your name: Rectal-Cranial Inversion Causes Act 2020, c3p(o).

Manifestly untrue, or these changes in state laws in the US (and in countries in Europe etc.) would not be taking place. There is clearly a majority in the people who get to vote on these changes who are voting for the change, and they're clearly a mixture of heterosexual and non-heterosexual men and women.

The universe in which the term 'marriage' is universally accepted as meaning what you posited above is a shrinking universe within a larger one. Cosmic.

I don't enjoy the fact that this is painful for some people on this planet - regardless of the pain inflicted on me as a bisexual by some of those people. Pain caused by attachment to a belief is still pain (and sometimes worse than the physical kind). Rigid things crack under pressure, so I need not feel responsible for that pain in order to respond to it. It's painful for me to be angry too, so I have to deal with that one myself.

Demonstrably untrue, at least in this country. For example,the state cannot legislate that the Catholic church must allow women to be ordained as Priests. Similarly, the state cannot compel them to open up their institution of marriage to homosexual couples.

The state does have varying control (depending on the state) on admission policies of private clubs/associations, but generally only to the extent they are operating as a business or are operating in/as a place of public accommodation. Generally if the club can demonstrate it is not engaged in business activity (or facilitating business activity) and if it meets the state-mandated rules of being "private" then the discriminatory admissions policy may be allowed ...



Probably because that's the subject of this thread ...



Well, the difference there is that clubs and associations aren't government institutions required by law to afford equal access to civil rights, services and benefits. So while clubs and associations may or may not be able to discriminate (see above), public institutions are most definitely not. This is why I find your arguing the equivalency of the two to be terribly unconvincing ...

The sports analogies I find questionable if only because they most often require direct brute-force physical competition which demands segregation into various physical types in order to be able to effectively play the game -- not terribly analogous to the capability of a couple being able to walk into a courthouse, fill out some forms and walk out with certain guaranteed rights as a result ...

I just want to re-draw attention to the fact that for many gay/lesbian couples, the potential legal rights afforded to them by getting married are the least of the motives for wishing for marriage. The act of marriage holds an archetypal significance in people's hearts that is to do with a public declaration and celebration of commitment to one another. Whether religious or secular, it is still in that sense sacred to them. This is the reason why most of these couples want marriage, rather than some 'civil partnership' foisted on them by a portion of the population who are cursed with a belief in some kind of moral hierarchy of human commitment.

'You can ride on the bus if you sit at the back' has worn out its grooves.