We've got no hope.

[rahli]

long deep breathing gets anyone through anything

 

Unless your stuck on the bottom of a swimming pool

[etherealdrifter]

doh

[Anodyne]

^ attack me if you like matey

 

Sweet, muppet-wrestling! Just when I was about to give up on this thread!

[Mycot]

^ attack me if you like matey

 

Yeah, you asked for it though.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Mycot

[Mycot]

*sigh* I should know better than to reply to your stuff Mycot, but some deep and reasonable part of my soul continues with the delusion that a well reasoned discussion actually changes things

 

The first part of this brings a gentle smile to my lips, I may be building up some fondness for you as I'm making an effort of addressing your post.. You write long posts so if I miss Important things that you want me to address, let me know.

Of the latter I also am known to suffer from the same delusion. Perhaps when people can figure out what they specifically agree on and where specifically they may disagree that may be a starting point for forward progression.

Frankly, for someone who is attempting to neutrally explain their case I find your tone belittling:

 

Don't mean no malicious intent but I am way past giving a damn, so that may indicate that I am growing increasingly impatient.

I mean, aside from the assumption that people who disagree with you are your intellectual inferiors, the notion that political correctness ( such a loaded term touted by the right... I preferred it when public consideration for others was simply called good manners ) is some kind of default position of weakness for the sheep who need to harden the fuck up and agree with you... is laughable

 

I don't make this assumption merely on the basis that a view differs. In fact I am intrigued by any well thought out position especially when it is well communicated.

I like people to think for themselves and not take the easy out by just going along with the crowd or even just going along with mechanically agreeing with me because it is easy or safe. If you agree with me know specifically what you are agreeing with and why and likewise if you disagree with me know specifically what it is that you are disagreeing with. People who think and challenge rather than followers.

I feel that use of the term PC is legit with wikipedia giving several differring interpretations of the term.

I'll take break for now. Let me know if there is something you want me to adress.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Mycot

[Torsten]

Yourself and a good many of the gay community similarly don't personally care too much about marriage and the punters out there know this. So it's a case of lets give these rights (marriage) to a bunch of folk who can't even take the damn thing seriously, the root idea of marriage being joined toghetr in holy matrimony.remember. With the poor state that marriage is in these days further demoralising of the institution is probably the last thing we need. Young guys out there ought to remember that to a large extent getting married is how they get to have meaningful sex and live a fulfilling and complete life.

I personally don't need a bit of paper to tell me the strength of my bond. That doesn't mean I don't take marriage seriously. To me marriage just has too many religious connections to really bother with.

I get the feeling you assume that same sex relationships are not as enduring as straight ones. Is that correct? Because if you assumed theyw ere the same [or even more enduring] then adding gays to the institution of marriage would improve the institution that you lament is being degraded. So maybe we need to look at the data from places that allow gay marriage to see how it stacks up against straight marriage. Because if it is better then you would have to support it, right? ;)

Your definition fo marriage is quite limited too. The 'holy matrimony' is a religious concept which is quite recent in terms of evolutionary time scale that you like to refer to. In fact this religious construct it is completely irrelevant at the evolutionary time scale. So it seems to me that you ar epicking and chosing whatever suits you. Either we deal in evolutionary terms or we deal in very recent artificial constructs. if the latter then I advise to do some research on just how much marriage has changed over the last few hundred years and whether those changes are any more or less dramatic than the change we are currently facing. eg, what do you think of marriage between blacks and whites? Most of the arguments currently peddled against gay marriage are the same as the ones used in the racial marriage discussion not so long ago.

So if you chose social constructs as your guide then you also have to accept the historical flexibility. if you chose evolution then you ahve a whole lots of other problems such as polygamy, child sex, subjugation, etc

Also, as far as religion goes, i don't think anyone is insisting that churches perform gay marriages. So the religious construct will in no way be harmed by state approved same sex marriage.

This is the problem I have with the anti gay marriage crowd - they have no consistent or logical arguments. if you're going to use an argument then you also have to make it logical. You can't pick and chose between evolution and religion, but only chose the bits you like while ignoring the bits that are inconvenient to your argument. I actually much prefer nutters like that independent cadidate in canberra for the election this week who quite simply and honestly says gays disgust him and there should be no premarital sex [pand hence no gay sex because gays can't marry]. At least he is logically consistent, while your arguments are just arguments of convenience.

On the discrimiatory/ equality issue many things that may appear discrimatory are actually not. An example is cheating that may occur in heterosexual couples. The PC would insist cheating is the same thing regardless of which sex performs it where the more insightful knows full well in their bones that cheating is a very different scenario for a male performs it than when a female performs it.

I am not going to make a comment on this because most people will see this exactly for what it is. I am just quoting it to highlight it.

Had a reread of post # 12 and agree that there are legal changes that ought to be made both for fairness and for what is best.

Keep in mind that that list was about 5 times as long just 3 years ago. Many state and federal laws were changed under the last set of labor governments. The problem with unequal laws is that they could be changed back anytime.

Personally I've never been comfortable with the state getting involved with marriage which is esentially a religous or spiritual affair. Just the man, woman and God

Holy crap batman. You need to do some reading. The origin of marriage has nothing to do with god or religion. In europe the roman format of marriage was spread with the expansion of the empire from 300 BC and had covered most of europe by 400 AD at which time the christians took control in rome and then put their stamp on the institution of marriage. So for europe religion had nothing to do with it until 400AD or later. It is convenient to simply only look at the 1600 years of church control over marriage and neglect the hundreds and possibly thousands of years before it. It is also convenient for you to ignore marriage constructs in other cultures that existed well before the colonial forces imposed christian concepts. It is quite obvious that marriage existed long before religions took it on themselves to control the institution. It was one of the ways the church would have control and power over the people.

Where would I draw the line, there are many areas that ought to be addressed with laws intended to encourage procreation being one area and laws pertaining to children another. Perhaps like Thelema suggested we should have a separate institution that recognizes legal issues that same sex couples face but also recognizes that it is not the same thing as heterosexual marriage just as a marriage that is sacred and meaningful is different to a marriage for more secular porposes. Call it G-marriage or G-hookups.

Most marriages these days are not religious, so does that mean atheist straight people should also be denied marriage? or should have their union renamed s-hookup? and be given a different and potentially limited set of rights? again, your argument is not consistent.

Seriously though the ramifications and issues are complex and this ought to be recognized and understood rather than overly simplistic portayals which don't aid true understanding of the issues faced by same sex couples.

I've got the feeling you probably mean something slightly different to what I am reading in that sentence, but I agree ;)

the way I see evolution is that as organisms our bodies have lived and addapted to certain circumstances for millenia and many of these circumstances are important for physical and mental health, Eg paleolitic diet and tribal structures and the more we fall outside of the natural the worse our situation becomes. Yes I agree that science can enable us to make better decisions but too often science is hubristic enough to believe it can dispense with nature that we have conquered nature. I believe that much of this so-called scientfic evidence is skewed by political correctness just as PC may skew many statistics and possitions.

OK, so let me get this right....

You are dismissing changes to the evolutionary process as wrong - but you only apply this selectively where it suits you [ie same sex parents = bad , paleolithic diet = good , tribe = good , sex with minors = bad].

You then dismiss science as a reliable tool to make those judgement calls.

So tell me again, why is sex with 13 year old girls bad? is it because you selectively accept the science on this one? or is it just because YOU have decided that this is the case? if you selectively accept science then you are again being inconsistent. If however you base your decision on your own preference then you are also being inconsistent. So basically we should just accept your value judgement on these issues without any facts or research to back them up. is that how far this society has come that we are back to beliefs as the only truth?

The evidence that I have examined strongly implies that mothers are most important to babies but come todlerhood when ego structures are being formed then fatherhood is most important to the child.

what evidence? please elaborate, because this sounds like populist nonsense. While your assumption migt be correct, no study has ever backed this up as being essential or conversely detrimental to the development of kids.

You might also want to consider that parents aren't the only role models that kids can get this from.

I have no great issue if the occasional child should fall under the care of a same sex couple and yet would hesitate at this being accepted as some type of norm as your last sentence addresses and many heterosexuals fear..

Like I said before, gay couple are not going to decide to have kids on the basis of better laws. The laws merely guarantee the proper rights to those who are already in that situation. ie equal laws will prevent misery, but won't create additional same sex parents.

[Mycot]

Holy fuck Torsten. I can see that you have way misunderstood me in many really fundemental ways on even basic central concepts of religion central to a lot of your arguement or even my definition of marriage which is supposedly limited so let me try to clarify. By the way you write even longer posts than Darklight I may have to appoach it in a piecemeal fashion.

For starters I don't give two hoots about marriage having to be in some christian religious format. The bible has some good stuff in it but that does not mean that one has to take an orthodox religious approach towards it.

Now some of my more religios sounding comments "Holy Matrimony". When people hear this they may think Oh Oh here comes that christian shit but is not what was meant. By definition marriage has a sacred aspect and being married is the same thing as being joined in holy matrimony and all this is crosscultural.. Don't think religion but spirit. Think of marriage as symbol. The alchemical marriage. The Tantric marriage. The union of shiva and shakti. These are all symbolic archetypes of the mind which are universal. My comment about "man, woman and god". I certainly was not refering to the christian god but the phrase was meant more as an alchemical idea the joining of man and woman producing bliss and the experience of the sacred.

I wonder how many had so grossly misunderstood me on where I was coming from in invocing the Spiritual/Sacred aspect of marriage but this is symbol which underlies the human ceromony.

I hope that my efforts to bring some clarity has had some success and I imagine that this may possibly have a large effect on how one may interpereet you last post.

Anyway I am tired, yeah it's pretty late and will have another look at the content of your last rather long post. I'm not winging It's just more work for me.

Namaste.

[Torsten]

Thanks for clearing that up. I had indeed assumed you were approaching this with some religious principles at the core of your objection. You have to be careful when arguing such matters not to use the same phrases that are being used by what is the noisy minority and thus being tarred with the same brush. You did also preceed the 'holy matrimony' phrase with a comment about religion, which further compounded the impression.

By changing this perspective you are however opening the field up even further ;) If you are looking at marriage in a cross cultural perspective then to think of it as just between a man and a woman is ignoring the many other variations. You have now also included polygamy, child marriages, arranged marriages, polyfidelity, and divorce into it as these are all types of marriages that have existed for probably thousands of years in various cultures. So are you accepting that these are all part of the definition of marriage? That suddenly makes same sex marriages much less unattractive, right?

And if you are going cross culturally and historically, what about the ancient greeks and their same sex unions? how about the asian and indian ladyboys and their relationships [as old as the kama sutra]? and the 'third sex' in hawaii?

You are most welcome to make up your own definition of marriage and claim to protect that, but please do not couch your arguments in history, evolution or some supposed universal construct, all of which clearly fail to support your choice. Picking and chosing will never convince anyone.

This issue will be around for a long time yet, so no hurry with the replies.

On another note, if evolution and universal natural principles are so infallible, then why are about 2.5% of the population exclusively gay? That's some pretty fucked up evolution if that is not in some way beneficial.

[Darklight]

You think that you have problems. You only have to reply to one person. How am I supposed to muster the energy to reply to many many people, some who have written quite long posts,

 

Gosh, you poor, poor thing. You write up a very controversial post which you must by now realise contains stuff that many people here will disagree with- and then complain about the response?

That's my future you're proposing to have a say in, mine and a lot of people I care about, their kids and friends and other family

What were you expecting? That we'd just roll over and let that shit slide?

[Mycot]

Gosh, you poor, poor thing. You write up a very controversial post which you must by now realise contains stuff that many people here will disagree with- and then complain about the response?

That's my future you're proposing to have a say in, mine and a lot of people I care about, their kids and friends and other family

What were you expecting? That we'd just roll over and let that shit slide?

 

Your starting to sound really twisted here Darklight. Take a chill pill and get some sleep.

[Darklight]

Your starting to sound really twisted here Darklight. Take a chill pill and get some sleep.

We'd be on an equal footing then

And I'm unlikely to be taking any kind of instruction from you, thanks

[Mycot]

Thanks for clearing that up. I had indeed assumed you were approaching this with some religious principles at the core of your objection. You have to be careful when arguing such matters not to use the same phrases that are being used by what is the noisy minority and thus being tarred with the same brush. You did also preceed the 'holy matrimony' phrase with a comment about religion, which further compounded the impression.

By changing this perspective you are however opening the field up even further ;) If you are looking at marriage in a cross cultural perspective then to think of it as just between a man and a woman is ignoring the many other variations. You have now also included polygamy, child marriages, arranged marriages, polyfidelity, and divorce into it as these are all types of marriages that have existed for probably thousands of years in various cultures. So are you accepting that these are all part of the definition of marriage? That suddenly makes same sex marriages much less unattractive, right?

And if you are going cross culturally and historically, what about the ancient greeks and their same sex unions? how about the asian and indian ladyboys and their relationships [as old as the kama sutra]? and the 'third sex' in hawaii?

 

Yes, yes and yes. But one must be careful. At the center there is the alchemical symbol,, It is a sacrred symbol, the union of yin and yang .One must still treat the symbol with the utmost sacrednes and respect for it ot have any value.

You are most welcome to make up your own definition of marriage and claim to protect that, but please do not couch your arguments in history, evolution or some supposed universal construct, all of which clearly fail to support your choice. Picking and chosing will never convince anyone.

 

I'm not sure what you are getting at here or where I may be picking and choosing., All I said is that evolution has given us bodies with certain needs. Any universal construct would be like Jungs Universal unconscious.

Maybe having said yes, yes and yes, that has clarified this as well.

On another note, if evolution and universal natural principles are so infallible, then why are about 2.5% of the population exclusively gay? That's some pretty fucked up evolution if that is not in some way beneficial.

 

I've come acros something of this nature in Robert Anton Wilson. If I recall correctly its like nature trows in a random unpredictability factor disliking perfection. The Japanese have a similar concept where they porposly intoduce an imperfection into their arts and crafts.

[chilli]

And if you are going cross culturally and historically, what about the ancient greeks and their same sex unions? how about the asian and indian ladyboys and their relationships [as old as the kama sutra]? and the 'third sex' in hawaii?

 

Don't forget the Two-Spirit people of the Native Americans.

*facepalm*

So much fail in this thread, I don't even know where to start.

I might write up a proper reply once I get over the insanity of how bigoted people are and can muster the energy.

 

Don't stress too much. Unprejudiced readers are also going *facepalm* and bigots won't be convinced by any amount of reasoned argument anyway.

Edited September 27, 2012 by chilli

[Mycot]

Yeah SYNeR needn't freak too much about someone who's got polygamy, child marriages, arranged marriages, polyfidelity, divorce, same sex marriages,asian and indian ladyboys, third sexes and now even Two-Spirit people in their bed. Wears me out though.

Perhaps just shy.

Edited September 29, 2012 by Mycot

[Mycot]

You have to be careful when arguing such matters not to use the same phrases that are being used by what is the noisy minority and thus being tarred with the same brush.

 

This can be difficult especially if you refuse to allow that noisy minority to steal and monopolize the language. Not good for the more poetic amongst us.

I've been thinking about whats been occuring in this thread LOL, and I figure that language a lot of the time is like one of those Young Girl-Old Woman Illusions.

You look at a sentence one way and its saying one thing and if you look at that same sentence in another way it is saying something compleatly different.

So it can be tricky sometimes figuring out what is actually being expressed.

[Anodyne]

But using ambiguous language in arguments is such an awesome tactic! Because then you can later claim, "no, that's not what I meant at all" and complain about how misunderstood you are. Really, you should try it some time.

[nabraxas]

it doesn't matter what language is used.

Mycot, if you don't believe that LOVE can be experienced by homosexual couples

& if you don't believe that in such a loving relationship children can be raised,

you're not worth the time ov day.

[Mycot]

Mycot, if you don't believe that LOVE can be experienced by homosexual couples

& if you don't believe that in such a loving relationship children can be raised,

you're not worth the time ov day.

 

These are two assumptions if they are to be taken strictly as written. And both false.

[Mycot]

But using ambiguous language in arguments is such an awesome tactic! Because then you can later claim, "no, that's not what I meant at all" and complain about how misunderstood you are. Really, you should try it some time.

 

Language allways has an ambiguous character. No avoiding that.

While care should be taken to try to communicate unambiguously, more subtle ideas may not always be communicated so easily.

Verification of claims can be made from the rest of the arguement.