I think the time is past due to apply Christ’s message of loving everyone as we love ourselves and to allow those homosexual people to live their lives free from outside interference from others. God himself does not force us to obey Him—He has granted us free will and hopes that we will chose to love and obey Him. Love does not force or coerce because the result is unhappiness and resentment. Love grants autonomy to the beloved. I think that it is time for tolerance, understanding and love. Maybe I am wrong, but that it how I feel.

For those who base their arguments on the Word in the Bible, I would remind them that the Bible never addressed a long-term, loving , committed relationship between two parties of the same sex, and certainly never discussed marriage in this context. It simply condemned certain sexual practices or sexual acts. In order to reach the conculsion that homosexual marriage would be forbidden, it is necessary to interpret these statements and apply them to facts not in evidence in the Bible. Maybe you are correctly interpreting these statements, but isn’t this judging others—forbidden in the Bible. Interpreting the law and applying it to a new set of facts is the providnce of a judge, and the Bible tells us that there is only one Judge and one Lawgiver. I have been thinking about this quite a bit because my church preaches against homosexual marriage and I have spent some time re-examining my own views. I don’t know that I am right, but so far, no one has come up with an argument sufficient to convince me to change my mind.

Always a line has to be drawn to secure a goal, and it must be drawn without leaving any loop-hole. Unfortunately, such loop-holes have always been created by the judiciary throughout the history.

Both of you argue that the difference between the heterosexual and homosexual groups with regard to same sex marriage is desire. Let’s examine this idea of desire in a different rights context. Consider the right to vote. Roughly 40-50% of eligible voters choose not to cast ballots during presidential elections in the U.S. By failing to cast a vote, have these inactive citizens forsaken their voting rights? Should their names permanently and irrevocably be stripped from the rolls? Certainly not! Their lack of interest does not diminish their right to vote. Conversely, extreme electoral zeal does not multiply the value of votes cast by politically active individuals. The right to vote is insensitive to desire. Other rights are similarly insensitive to desire.

We must return to the heart of the matter when searching for civil rights violations – treatment. The only question we need to ask is, “Were individuals treated differently at the point of decision.” If both heterosexuals and homosexuals cannot marry others of the same sex, they are equally treated. The level of desire will, of course, be different, but when it comes to finding unequal treatment in a given rights framework, desire is irrelevant.

Now, let’s return to the mystifying last paragraph of my previous response. My arguments have been based on the idea of detecting rights violations within a given framework. One only needs to identify treatment differences or the presence of equal treatment to confirm or deny rights violations in this context. However, one can argue that equal denial is equal violation, if one can establish that a fundamental right granted to all mankind is not present in an existing framework. The specter of equal denial as equal violation is the one conjured in my previous closing paragraph. It is important to remember, though, that rights violation detection and the identification of a list of basic rights fall into two distinct categories of discussion. One is well advised not to make the error of ascribing properties of one to the other.

MISCELLANEOUS
Conrad:
- Don’t worry about the identity confusion. Given my infrequent posts, it’s quite understandable.
- I accept that heterosexuals and homosexuals self-sort into different categories via sexual behavior.
- God, religion, morality and western customs become relevant when one tries to establish a fundamental set of rights, not when one tries to determine if existing rights are being violated.
- Bias is unavoidable. I have it, and so do you.

Zack:
- I agree that marriage is a fundamental social institution.
- I am partitioning the complex problem of homosexual marriage into parts in order to better form a reasoned position on the issue. As it turns out, the part about equality within the given civil rights framework has been easier to resolve than the ones about fundamental rights or ancillary benefits.
- As a side note, Leona Helmsley left 12 M$ to her dog; so, I find it highly dubious when people claim they cannot transfer their wealth to the institutions and individuals they see fit.

At the base of it, one cannot claim a violation of rights unless one can identify a difference in treatment between supposedly privileged and disadvantaged classes.

My response here would be very similar to Zack’ s for me Homosexuals here are the disadvantaged class while hetereosexuals are not. Your case rests on Homosexuals and Hetereosexuals being of the same class; which they are not, in my view. This is a category error on your part which I feel undermines the rest of your otherwise logical arguement.

Paragraphs one and two of your response introduce God, religion and morality into the discussion. They also inject customs, traditions and, indirectly, financial matters into an already complicated debate. On the matter of simply identifying civil rights violations, these matters are irrelevant.

Ok, I can appreciate your arguements about trying to keep the debate focused and not expand its coverage but you feel that morality, customs and traditions as well as financial matters are “irrelevant” to a debate on civil rights?! I think this is really wrong; Western traditions of civil and political rights as well as law are in reality based on these sources.

My point, though not very sharply laid out, for which I will take responsibility; is that one of the reasons that this can be claimed not to be a civil rights violation can only be valid if one takes a specific interpretation of marriage which itself rests on the sources I outlined above.

You have to think about what is the foundation from which civil rights flow and what defines them. I don’t think we can do that unless we also examine some of our earlier assumptions regarding marriage.

Both homosexual man A and heterosexual man B are denied tax benefits if they cannot marry man C. They are equally denied; neither class enjoys a privilege. Interjecting statements about marrying the person of your choice vs. the man or woman of your choice introduces imprecision into your argument. Homo or hetero, each chooses to marry a man or woman, not an amorphous being. To counter my argument, you must find a delta, not add ancillary issues or obfuscations.

No, the problem is that you are treating A, B and C as the same when they are not. They are all men, sure but they have other divisions apart from that. In fact, the assumption that one must be defined by gender alone like this, to my mind, indicates a hetereosexual bias.

A and B belong to different categories as far as I am concerned; you can say that they are both subsets of a larger group which covers all men regardless of sexual orientation. So what you have here is a case where subset 1 (heteros) have a right that subset 2 (homosexuals) don’t have. This is discrimination.

How does one know what privilege is a basic right that every human should possess? This is not the same as detecting a rights violation. The delta concept helps a person check for violations, but it is useless in the search for the base set of human rights…

I am sorry but this is confusing. How can you know whether there is a rights violation unless you have first established what these rights are – isn’t this basic falsification theory? Unless we can agree what constitutes a set of basic civil rights, there is little point in checking for violations. This is important. My feeling is that we probably differ on our the ascribed set of civil rights, which is one of the reasons why will disagree on this specific issue.

You argue that gay/lesbian marriage is not a civil right. I am actually willing to grant that since I am unsure whether there is such a right or not. However, I think there are smaller such rights for homosexual couples to take care of each other and be together. These rights have necessitated a lot of domestic partner benefits here in the US, which is something I don’t like since I believe marriage (i.e. a contractual long term relationship) is an important pillar of society. That argument gives me a pragmatic case for gay marriage as I wrote a long time ago.

As for the current lawsuit in California, it’s stupid in my opinion.

At the base of it, one cannot claim a violation of rights unless one can identify a difference in treatment between supposedly privileged and disadvantaged classes. The examples present disadvantaged groups in situations where disadvantage is manifest and where it is not relevant to emphasize this point. Paragraphs one and two of your response introduce God, religion and morality into the discussion. They also inject customs, traditions and, indirectly, financial matters into an already complicated debate. On the matter of simply identifying civil rights violations, these matters are irrelevant. Both homosexual man A and heterosexual man B are denied tax benefits if they cannot marry man C. They are equally denied; neither class enjoys a privilege. Interjecting statements about marrying the person of your choice vs. the man or woman of your choice introduces imprecision into your argument. Homo or hetero, each chooses to marry a man or woman, not an amorphous being. To counter my argument, you must find a delta, not add ancillary issues or obfuscations.

Now, your white bread / brown bread analogy, on the other hand, touches a matter of the gravest importance for any group of interacting people – the identification of rights. How does one know what privilege is a basic right that every human should possess? This is not the same as detecting a rights violation. The delta concept helps a person check for violations, but it is useless in the search for the base set of human rights…

It didn’t sound quite like you either, so I was a bit surprised. Interesting comparisons though even though I didn’t agree with the arguement.

Captain Arrrgh: ok I missed the magic trick where with a sleight of hand you defined gay marriage as “off the menu.”

I think they kind of are Zack. This depends on your defintion of marriage whether it is a right or a privelege and whether it is to be defined as a union between a man and a woman or between two individuals. Your defintion only stands up if marriage is defined as an institution where a man and a woman make a commitment to each other not one where two inviduals make a commitment to each other. The former definition is in my opinion more influenced really by our religious heritage and bourgeois conceptions of marriage that grew out of late mideveal Europe. I think it is time we perhaps moved beyond these definitions.

Also I can’t accept your analogies, it seems to imply that sexual orientiation is a matter of choice rather than something that is exogenously determined. I think the history of homosexuality particularly in homophobic societies where many have entered into unhappy marriages and as a result suffered various psycholical problems, lapsed into drinking etc. indicates that to speak of a right to marry women for them is meaningless since it is a right that would impose a high personal cost to exercise and which they have no desire to do so.

It would be like going to the all the shops and being told that they only sold white bread, now if for some reason white bread made you perennially ill and you could only eat brown bread (and lets just assume that bread is the only available source of staple in this fictive economy) and that yeah you could have brown bread but only if you went abroad to buy it; and for whatever reason the majority of people who liked white bread and weren’t affected by it refused to allow the govt to import or seel any brown bread domestically; then this strikes me as discrimination.

Part of the problem is that marriage isn’t simply a right, it isn’t even just a privelege – it is an institution and I don’t see why homosexuals can’t partake of this institution as well as hetereosexuals. To say that it isn’t discrimination because heteresexuals can’t undergo homsexual marriage seems to imply that homosexuals are just hetereosexuals in disguise who should stop moaning since they dont’ have any bars that hetereosexuals have.

Of course marriage is about a lot more than just a legal act recognised by the state; what is really driving this conflict imo is a desire by the gay community to put homsexual marriage- relationships on the same footing as hetereosexual-marriage relationships. And why not.

Lastly, surely all most civil rights complaints will involve self-interest. In your analagy of the sandhwich incident the black customer can legitimately claim that his civil rights have been violated – why is this incompatible with his self-interest?