Because it isn't about civil marriages.I just wonder why the tradional advocates of separation of church and state don't speak up. Marriage comes from the church. Civil unions are what you get when you go to the courthouse. A couple can get a civil union with all the same benefits that come with marriage, and they can still call say they are married. If you go to the courthouse to tie the knot, you aren't forced to reply, if someone asks if you're married, "no, we're civilly unionized."The whole thing seems silly to me, and I just wonder why no one is getting the bigger, more important point: Why is the government granting privileges to certain people just because they are married? That's the issue right? Gays complain about insurance and inheritance laws. Well, where are the church-and-state separationists? They should be calling for the separation of marriage- an institution of the church- and state as well, and an end to the differential privilege granted to married couples over non-married ones. And gays should be supporting that position, if, in fact, that is the real reason they want to be able to marry.

Because separate can never be equal. Ask any gay couple with a CU in Vermont.

So changing a word will make it so?You're silly.This equality won't come from changing a word. You can try to reengineer people's perception of what it is by changing the words used to describe it, but words are just that, flata voca, empty sounds. It will be the meaning of the word that will change, not the thing being described.

Brian: You're right. And we should go back to separate drinking fountains because, hey, they're just drinking fountains (flata aqua?). *insert sarcasm here*And you can't just claim that "words are just that, flata voca, empty sounds" because there is a HUGE body of literature that argues the opposite. Not only phenomology and existential philosophies, but also schools of neurology, psychology and anthropology. Words and meanings are not as easily separable as you are suggesting. There are no linguistic vacuums, so where are we supposed to posit the division of words from their meanings? Further, I believe that one of the arguments for 'marriage' runs that even if civil unions and marriages are made equal now, in the future every time the government wants to extend or deny benefits to marriage, they will also have to do the same for civil unions.

Both sides have got unclean hands in this issue. "Seperate but equal" is a bankrupt doctrine, but that isn't what this is about. There is a larger agenda on the gay-privilege side, just like on the anti-gay side. If this was about "being left alone" then the right to PRIVACY would be what they were fighting for, but the gay-privilege groups seem to want everything BUT privacy, seeking to thrust their lifestyle into daily life for everyone.On the other hand, the anti-groups seem to not be content with "you do your thing, and I'll do mine." The solution that I would like to see is to have every marriage counted as a CU in the eyes of the law and public life (like insurance and employee benefits) and leave the entire concept of marriage to the churches. Stop issuing marriage licenses. Get your CU declared right after your religeous ceremony.

Phelps: in a sense I completely agree with you. get rid of marriage and have the govnerment only offer Civil Unions. It sounds fine to me. Doubt the government will ever do that. But,either way works for me,though. All marriages or all Civil Unions - as longs as its ALL. But I do disagree with your whole "gay privilege" argument. Maybe you didn't mean it in a derogatory tone, but your suggestion that gays and lesbians are trying to "thrust their lifestyle into daily life for everyone" is just blind and one-sided. It seems to me that the exact opposite is occuring. Straight couples walk around holding hands, kissing in public, touching, hugging, loving - all publicly! Nobody gives them a second look. Well not nobody, but even those that complain about "public displays of affection" usually only refer to extreme displays of sexuality. Yet if two men kiss in public, just lightly, a quick tap, suddenly people are up in arms: "Don't thrust your lifestyle on us." Its not about a right to privacy. Its not about individual liberty. Its about social equality. I know libertarians have a hard time thinking about anything except individual rights, but there are some people who just want blend in and be apart of the larger community. This is part of the gay marriage initiative. Its not about trying to stand out and say "nah nah! we have marriage too." We don't want special rights. We want equal rights. Its not gays and lesbians who are thrusting their lifestyle out into the public, its the heterosexual lifestyle that's thrusting itself on us. We are simply responding to that creation of the identity of difference. We don't care what you or your mom or your friends think of our lifestyle. We don't care if the catholic church or a jewish synagogue won't marry us. Those are issues for gays and lesbians in those communities. Our country, however, is the community for all of us. Its not just an issue of privacy or rights, its also an issue of social equality. That's why i hate the "they're thrusting their lifestyle on us" argument. Because its the other way around.

Gay people advocating marriage don't want separate but equal. They want equality. They want their relationships recognized as equal in the eyes of society. Many conservatives claim this is part of the "gay agenda" meant to foist homosexuality on them and rub their noses in it, er, so to speak. Well, yes and no. Let me assure all you heterosexuals out there that gay people are as divided about this issue as you are. There are gay mainstreamers who see marriage as a way to legitimize gay people. There are gay people who would be happy with civil unions. There are gay people who want nothing to do with marriage, and there are gay people who fall in between those main points. If there is an agenda in the advocates for gay marriage at work here though, it's not a gay agenda, it's a human agenda, an American agenda to be more blunt. The very human need for acceptance, for one. Why is that so hard for some people to understand, that people wish to feel accepted and an intergral part the community. And it's American because some little thing written into the Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal has been fueling and energizing people for over 200 years. It's what's been at the core of each and every civil rights movement in this country since the very beginning and one of the most enduring principles that people have been willing to fight and die for.

> I know libertarians have a hard time thinking about anything except individual rightsWhile not an official spokesdude, I don't think there are any issues when both people holding hands want to hold hands. There's only a problem when they're holding hands against the wishes of one of them.

Phelps: in a sense I completely agree with you. get rid of marriage and have the govnerment only offer Civil Unions. It sounds fine to me. Doubt the government will ever do that. But,either way works for me,though. All marriages or all Civil Unions - as longs as its ALL. But I do disagree with your whole "gay privilege" argument. Maybe you didn't mean it in a derogatory tone, but your suggestion that gays and lesbians are trying to "thrust their lifestyle into daily life for everyone" is just blind and one-sided. It seems to me that the exact opposite is occuring. Straight couples walk around holding hands, kissing in public, touching, hugging, loving - all publicly! Nobody gives them a second look. Well not nobody, but even those that complain about "public displays of affection" usually only refer to extreme displays of sexuality.

I absolutely meant for the title to be offensive because the concept is offensive. Name one right -- a bona fide right, like life, liberty, property, privacy -- that straight people have and gay people don't. That list will be real intruiging to me, because I can't think of any.Do people get offended at gay people being gay? Sometimes, but not as much as you seem to imply. Even if it is as bad as you say -- even if it is worse -- you don't have the right to escape ridicule when you do something that the people find distasteful. That is what I mean when I use the term "gay privilege". No one in the gay privilege camp seem to be fighting for tolerance; they are fighting for acceptance throught the use of government force. That is wrong, and I won't condone it. No one has a right to acceptance.

No one has a right to acceptance

Spoken like an accepted member of the mainstream.

Spoken like an accepted member of the mainstream.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I'm a supporter of privatizing roads, walking down the street with an MP5 under your arm, and 74th trimester abortions. You can't get any more middle of the road than that.

Yvelle,You have completely missed my point. Water fountain politics and sophomore-level philosophy discussions, while interesting, have no bearing on what I was talking about. And by the way, I would LOVE to see some peer-reviewed study that demonstrates that one can cause matter to undergo some form of transmutation simply by changing the vocal utterance used to refer to it. If you could change a water fountain and other physical objects into something else simply by calling it something else, I would quickly suggest you go short on the gold futures market. Or then again, maybe you are just a Lyndon LaRouche voter.Now, let me explain what I was talking about.I simply said that you cannot force people to accept something simply by changing the word used to refer to it. The new word will evolve, over time, to carry the same meaning that the word it replaced did.

get rid of marriage and have the govnerment only offer Civil Unions. It sounds fine to me.

You are missing the point. Why should the government be 'offering' any of those at all? Marriage is the church's role. The only reason you seem to want to call it 'marriage' is because you want to cast a veneer of normalcy over gay relationships, and force people who would otherwise wince at the notion of two people of the same sex kissing to accept it. Do you really think that if your two men kiss in public after they are allowed to call their living arrangement 'marriage' that people will, instead of being offended, disgusted, or up in arms, suddenly change their attitudes and coo about what a lovely married couple they are? If this is your way of gaining acceptance, it isn't a very good way.Leave marriage to the churches. It is a private institution. If there is a church that will allow a gay couple to get married (which there are), then fine. They can call it marriage. Hell, they can even call it marriage without a church. Personally I don't care. What I am very distrustful of is the fact that they want to have to government set definitions and decide who's in and who doesn't belong in a private institution such as marriage.If the argument is about differences in benefits between married and non-married couples, that should be an argument against that discrimination on the part of the government, not about what different types of relationships should qualify for that favorable discrimination. If the argument is, as I said in my first reply and you confirmed, NOT about government benefits and instead about something else, then I am skeptical and suspicious. I do not like the idea of any group using government power to tinker around with definitions and rules in order to try to engineer changes in the way people think. It sounds just a bit too Orwellian to me. It seems like some attempt at subliminal mind control. Great, you want to be accepted by everyone, you want to blend in. That's not an objectionable goal, but using the power of government to achieve that goal is not the way to do it.Why don't you focus efforts on extricating the tendrilous arms of government from every aspect of private life? Why don't you advocate for a separation of marriage and state? Once marriage is privatized, you can do what you like.

Phelps:I don't mean to imply you're normal. Just that you are accepted as such.

Brian:Do you think you can make your arguments without the irrational, hyper-emotional lead-ins?Frankly, I don't think you can.

Brian, you said: "You can try to reengineer people's perception of what it is by changing the words used to describe it, but words are just that, flata voca, empty sounds."Then I said: "you can't just claim that 'words are just that, flata voca, empty sounds' because there is a HUGE body of literature that argues the opposite." And then you said: "I would LOVE to see some peer-reviewed study that demonstrates that one can cause matter to undergo some form of transmutation simply by changing the vocal utterance used to refer to it."I know its confusing when a lot of different ideas are getting thrown around; but I was responding to the idea that people's PERCEPTION can be 'reengineered' through locution. I guess the second part of what you said: "It will be the meaning of the word that will change, not the thing being described" is what you thought I was referring. But even then, the 'thing being described' is not the thing-in-itself. So we can't be talking about transmutation in either case. But some peer reviewed journal articles (okay, they're not ALL peer reviewed, but they're a good start) that suggest words affect perception (and thereby the word 'marriage' will aide in establishing equality for homosexuals unions):Gelman, Susan L & Medin, Douglas L. (1993). What's So Essential about Essentialism? A Different Perspective on the Interaction of Perception, Language, and Conceptual Knowledge. In _Cognitive Development_, 8(2) 157-67Raymond, William D., Fisher, Julia A., & Healy, Alice F. (2002). Linguistic knowledge and language performance in English article variant preference. In _Language & Cognitive Processes_, 17(6) 613-662.Klann, J. Kastrau, F., Semeny, S., & Huber, W. (2002). Perception of signs of written words: An fMRI study. In _Cortex_, 38(5) 874-877.I tried to give some examples from Psychology, Neurology, and Cognitive Sciences. For Philosophy see Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and Heidegger's Being and Time. Sorry about the age of the Gelman article, I just grabbed the ones I had at my desk (Hence why only Raymond, Fisher, & Healy is peer-reviewed. But they are all from accredited journals.)All of the articles point to the idea that words are not just flata voca. Perceptions are strongly shaped by them. I'm not claiming we can "force people to accept something simply by changing the word use to refer to it" -- but that's clearly not what you were talking about either. You argued that "This equality won't come from changing a word." And I suggested "Words and meanings are not as easily separable as you are suggesting."Brian, you also said: "Marriage is the church's role."Do I need to respond to this? Even the conservative bloggers realize that marriage is offered by the state as well as the church and that they are distinct.But if you are, as the rest of your post seems to suggest, arguing that marriage should be "privatized" then go ahead. I'll listen. But I never said gay marriage was about anything besides benefits. Brian, you said: "If the argument is, as I said in my first reply and you confirmed, NOT about government benefits and instead about something else, then I am skeptical and suspicious" ALL government regulated marriage is about benefits from the government - being recognized by the government. Religious marriage is in a different field. So if the "something else" you say I confirmed is what I was calling equality, I was referring to equality from the government - which is still a government benefit in a way. You seem worried about the government somehow brainwashing you: "I do not like the idea of any group using government power to tinker around with definitions and rules in order to try to engineer changes in the way people think." First of all the government would only be tinkering with definitions and rules they IT established in the first place. I don't like the government messing with my life either. But we're talking about an institution that was established by the government (through adoption from a religious institution). The terms and rules are all founded in government and need to be changed there. If you're afraid of the social implications of the government establishing gay marriages and if you don't like the idea that this movement towards equality will slowly work its way into society and remove some of the difference established in hetero-homo sexual dialectics, then fear not. Despite my suggestion that language affects perception, I have seen no evidence that it occurs quickly or completely.Finally (I know this is getting long, don't kill me P6!), you ask "Why don't you focus efforts on extricating the tendrilous arms of government from every aspect of private life?" I agree I agree I agree I agree! But privatization seems (to me at least) to be replacing an political beast with an economic beast.

Phelps: I have already answered your challenge to "Name one right -- a bona fide right, like life, liberty, property, privacy -- that straight people have and gay people don't."EqualityIf we are talking about governmental equality, then it comes from changing the laws that create inequality. The government has no good faith reason why the biological sex of two consenting adults should affect a marriage contract and the benefits the government offers the couple and their family through the contract. But social equality is certainly something different. I admit that my whole gay privilege argument was weak as presented above; but it was not unfounded. I should have established first that I don't think governmental recognition of gay marriages will create social equality. If we look as government in the most minimal form, establishing gay marriages will only give a model for social equality to follow. In a maximum form it would have orwelian implications. However, since out government is more inbetween the two (and somewhat bogged down by beaurocracy and political apathy), the affect on social equality will be slow and minimal. The gay movement is not "fighting for acceptance through the use of government force." Yes, sometimes we get angry and there are certainly more 'radical' contingents. (We have MP5s too! *GRIN*) But in general, the movement is fairly moderate in its use of governmental force. With a government as bogged down as ours, its pretty difficult to use 'governmental force' unless you are the Dubbya or a cronie. Also, the gay movement is fighting on multiple fields for similar goals. On the governmental field it is fighting for equal treatment by the government. While we do expect some trickle-down in terms of equality we certainly are not expecting it quickly and we certainly aren't expecting much. Social fields need to be tackled through different means. Education is probably the biggest. And I certainly think some one has a right to escape ridicule. But a lot of this should come through education and things like that. The government should call for gay marriage out of equality in its treatment of marriage. And the government certainly has a role in public education. Our education system has certainly played a role in diminshing racism (at least overt racism). So why can't it do the same for homosexuality? Now that I think about it, it seems that a lot of what this back-and-forth seems to come from a confusion in what a "right" is. The dictionary definitions I'm finding are about as obscure as anything. What's your take on it?

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