Oh, yes, PS., about the people who marry their pets. If I thought the situation was harmful, I would be against it. I doubt anything too harmful is going to happen, considering the information published in the article, and so, in a moral sense, I don't care. But these are statistically uncommon cases, I agree, and I don't mind calling them 'abnormal'. However, while I could find a reason to oppose this situation based upon harm (and maybe a few other salient moral factors), I cannot find a moral reason to oppose or support it because of its prevalence.

According to the author of this column there are lobby groups presently agitating for equal rights for those who want to legalise their relationship with a special animal or an extra wife or two.
What do you say about the possibility of these forms of "marriage" becoming widespread? Imagine your children sitting down to watch Playschool, and witnessing the hosts acting out a scenario where little Johnny has a cat for a mummy.
Personally I agree with the author that marriage is a unique institution for the reproduction of the human race. If others want to be united with partners that deviate from this plan, let them call it something different. Invent a new game.
Those who wanted to throw the ball and have body contact, invented rugby rather than change the rules of soccer didn't they?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... gotry.html

I do not know if your biggest worry is about the misapplication of the word "marriage", or if you think that there is a good reason to treat people in negative or limited ways. If your worry is about the use of the word "marriage" only, and you feel that people should be treated equally, then I would simply suggest that you may have to get used to the fact that the meaning ascribed to words changes over time - "computer" used to mean a person, not a machine, for example, and you know that "gay" previously only had the meaning "happy". Semantic drift can be annoying and at times confusing, but it is something that happens as old language adapts to new circumstances.

However, if marriage is for the reproduction of the human race, then, as I said earlier, what happens to people who are sterile? Or people who get married and don't want children? Do they deserve treatment equal to homosexuals? What about people who reproduce but do not get married? What about people who do reproduce but are homosexual?
I notice that the article talks of "centuries of Biblical understanding of the sacrament of marriage". What about people who do not follow the Bible, but who get married? How should we treat these people? I can just see no clear reason from this position that some people should be treated less equally than others.

There is a legal component to this: Australia has an implicit understanding that there is a separation of Church and State (though not an explicit one as in the USA). If the legal understanding of marriage, or of the way that homosexuals should be treated in general, is from the Bible, and only from the Bible, then this would breach that idea.

If it is not, then I refer you to the post I wrote earlier about the treatment of people placed into different categories and ask, Why should the people who fall into the different categories be treated differently? This is probably the biggest question, because people have specific ideas that some things are 'natural' and some things are not, but never explain why these two groups they have distinguished deserve different treatment. There must be some fundamental value which we can talk about that would explain why people believe this different treatment is justified.

PS. As to zoophiles, I think you will find my comments in the previous post answer your question.

PPS. It has occurred to me that the person who wrote the article is acting as though something she owns is being bent or broken or otherwise mistreated - as if her values are being stamped all over. I find this curious, because she equally does not own the values of the people she is talking about, and any comment about her moral ideas being attacked or broken or twisted is equally valid to apply to other people - if she were to enforce her ideas, as she wishes, then their moral ideas would suffer as a consequence. She doesn't seem to recognise this: it is as if her ideas are being attacked and that she is not attacking anyone's but simply a victim.

mcfate
I likewise feel that something I love has been broken, because marriage is sacred to me. I know words change their meaning mcfate it's an interesting topic in itself. But marriage is not just a word to me or a piece of paper as it is often described by the majority of heterosexual couples who shun the whole process these days. It's not easy to understand why gays don't create their own type of civil ceremony with a name of their own creation. They are certainly not lacking in imagination. I suspect the reason they avoid that avenue is because they prefer to live be victims and pretend the only reason they haven't been married in church is because humanity throughout the whole of history has been against them.
It's not about denying anyone's equality, men and women are equal but compete in different sporting teams and categories don't they? Equal does not mean the same.
You didn't respond to my comment about polygamy either. In your opinion should that be legal?
You've side stepped the animal question too mcfate. What if it did catch on? No need for divorce, you could get one missus put down, and go choose a younger one at the pet shop!

Right. And no one is going to bust in on you and demand that you should not be allowed to get married. Marriage is obviously important to those people that raise it, and yet you are insisting that they should not be allowed to get married, despite their feelings about marriage. Unequal? Very.



I equally have difficulty understand why you object to homosexuals having the same ceremony that you had. You obviously think that they should not be allowed to participate in certain things - you wish to restrict their actions in regards to marriage. And you restrict it on the basis of ... this is sacred to me? What about how the people who want to get married feel? Should they restrict you in your actions because of how they feel?



I'm not sure whether to find this naive or offensive. Either you genuinely don't understand what homosexuals are saying and how they feel, or you think that they are deliberating acting a certain way for attention.



Men and women are equal in that they are both allowed to play sport. They do not have equal physical strength or stamina (in general). I guess, with this analogy, getting married would be playing sport, and the type of ceremony would be strength and stamina? We shouldn't restrict people from getting married in the same way we shouldn't restrict one gender from paying sport. You might think that homosexuals will not have the same love for each other that heterosexuals have, but should that guide you to restrict what is legal and illegal for them?



I quite clearly directed you to my previous post:



This works equally well for polygamy as well as for zoophilia.



I think killing your spouse is causing harm, so you can probably guess my opinion of that.

More specifically, you are conflating two separate issues. When two humans are in love, they both have a particular amount of consciousness, and so they have an understanding of their actions, their emotions, their love, how they want to live their life, and so on. Animals are different and quite probably have varying degrees of consciousness, somewhat less than humans probably, and no really effective way to communicate. So I think this is a misleading path to tread down, because eventually you will be comparing and equating the love of two fully conscious humans with the love of not-as-conscious animals. So if you would like to make another thread for this particular topic, I will join you there, but I would leave it out of this one.

The only way I can see you comparing the two in a logical way is if it is not about the other people or animals or their consciousnesses or their emotions or their love or their wishes about their lives, but simply about you and your feelings about the sanctity of marriage. If this is truly the case, then I can only state that you are being selfish.

I think that homosexuals want the Marriage Act extended to them because they want to be held in the same regard as heterosexuals who are married.
Unfortunately for them this will probably never be so.
There is every chance that the law will be changed but I doubt that the feelings of most normal people will change.

mcfate said,
" If this is truly the case then I can only state that you are being selfish."
I'll draw a comparison with an environmental issue I'm supporting the banning of a proposed highway right through the Serengeti game park. The Tanzanian government and businesses want it to go ahead, and it would create badly needed employment for the locals. In spite of this, large groups of foreigners like me, are trying to preserve the wildlife, just because we like it the way it is.
Is this act or similar ones like whale saving crusades selfish? I don't think so.
Anyone with an ounce of red blood in their veins will have strong feelings about some things. We cannot all be neutral, amorphous and submissively fashioned to accept the ever changing morals of the day.
The author in the article below describes the issue of gays marrying in church better than I can.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/crist ... in-church/

I think that the comments to the article you posted reflect some of my feelings well.

The author didn't get married because her church would not allow it, so I don't understand why she is pursuing a relationship her religion doesn't condone in the first place, whether married or not. Seems a bit too contradictory for me.

The difference between the Serengeti and marriage is that in the Serengeti, as you point out, the wildlife may be harmed. However, your response to marriage is that your feelings will get harmed. People who want to get married will have their feelings harmed and restrictions placed on their lives. So it is not nearly as similar as you suppose.

You can't restrict peoples actions based solely on how you feel.

I agree, Samuel, that a big push is for equal treatment, both within marriage or without. Change takes a long time, but it has to start somewhere if it is to start.

Why not?
What about this: A man walks naked into the gazebo of the local park where you are getting married. He sidles up close, then bends over and does a moonie in full view of the camera as you are saying "I do". Would you ask the person to move on. According to your argument you would have no right to ask him to restrict his behaviour because of your feelings.
Well holy mass is my wedding mcfate, and the gays demanding irregular sexual couplings be blessed are the man doing the moonie.

Yeah, right. Sometimes I think you aim to make a mockery of this whole thing. I don't think homosexuals turn up to your holy mass and start yelling out that they want to be married, right? Homosexuals take this issue very seriously, they do not, in the main (though you can never account for some people in any walk of life) aim to be disruptive. Instead, they ask for their issue, and their lives, to be taken seriously and treated equally.

Look at it this way: people go to mosques and worship a god other than the Christian god, and people in your church worship a god other than Allah. You both believe each other to be wrong. There are extremists in both cases, but generally most people in this situation are quiet people who wish to worship according to their beliefs and live their lives. Should one side legislate the other out of existence? Should one group have legislative restrictions and bar the other from worship?

Homosexuals are not "mooning" your religion any more than Islamic people are. You might disagree with them both, of course, but neither has an impact on how you worship. In other words, if gay marriage undermines marriage, then Islamic worship of Allah must undermine your worship of God (and Islamic marriage undermine your worship of marriage, perhaps). So all Islamic people, by the same principle, should be restricted from worshiping and marrying, if gay people are to be restricted from marriage.

Now I can see how Catholic homosexuals wanting to marry might be considered in a different light if you are a Catholic - but then again, this is because it is pretty contradictory to be both gay and Catholic, and worse to be gay and Catholic and marry. But the gay Catholic would obviously be trying to live two contradictory parts of their life at the same time. Most people who call for same-sex marriage do not call for specifically Catholic same-sex marriage, however, and the Catholic values are not impeded any more than they are by any non-Catholic event. If you feel that same-sex marriage is some sort of attack or affront on your values, then I understand how this could be difficult for you, but I also think that this is misinterpreted.

I am an atheist. I can get married if I wish, and I can also speak out about my atheism and how I feel that holy mass is an institutionalised delusion, and I have a legal right to do so. Should this right be taken away from me, just because you feel that it "moons your wedding"?

Yes, yes, yes mcfate you got it. I find it an affront and attack on my values.
Moslems are OK, to be honest I think we worship the same God. You won't hear me criticizing any other religion or philosophy either. I accept your comments about the Catholic Church, as your right to free speech.
I just think the gay activists have gone much too far, trying to change traditions that have been revered for centuries.
What if I wanted to gain admission to the Mensa organisation, with my very average IQ ?
I suggest there's nothing wrong with a mediocre intelligence, I was born this way, so why should I not have an equal right to belong to Mensa?



.

Admission to Mensa is a bit more like admission to Catholicism - it's not very valid or honest to do if you are gay. But marriage doesn't belong to Catholicism. Anglicans get married, Muslims get married, atheists get married. There is a legal definition of marriage that is separate to the Catholic definition of marriage, and it discriminates by sexuality.

Not all discrimination is wrong.

On some railways in the world sexual discrimination is rampant.
On the Mumbai metropolitan trains there are 'Ladies Only' carriages and 'Ladies Only' compartments in some otherwise non-discriminatory carriages. The railway also has discriminatory compartments for those suffering from contageous medical conditions, these compartments are almost empty, even on trains where commuters are clinging outside the doors by their fingertips or are being held by anonymous helping hands.

There is no sexual discrimination in the Australian marriage act, it allows marriage between men and women.

I think you'll find that the Mumbai situation is because of existing sexual assault. I don't think this is a useful comparison, as marriage is about love and not sexual assault.

the Marriage Act very clearly specifies a male and a female, one of the few laws that restricts peole by gender. Employments laws used to restrict people by gender, and then this was deemed dimiscriminatory. From a government point of view (unless they are a Christian or Muslim government) restricting what is legal and what is not by gender is discrimination.



You can keep your traditions if that is your wish. I don't think the Catholic Church is going to redefine marriage or promote homosexuality any time soon, but as I said, marriage is not solely a Catholic institution. Allowing same-sex marriage will not change Catholic tradition, but will change the legal rights of homosexuals, as well as perhaps promote general social equality - all without impinging on your right to worship as you wish.

PS. Is it the Catholic church that doesn't allow women as priests? This stance has alawys confused me. Is there a reason for this?

From a post on On Line Opinion, or 'OLO' for convenience.
Link: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11268

Ref. Catholic church not allowing women priests; Christ did not elevate any other than the Apostles to be priests, not even his mother, so the tradition is that he intended the priesthood to be a male institution.

I may have missed the point you were making with the article you quoted.

The point is that some who want to be the same also want to change that which they seek to attain sameness under.
They want marriage under the Act but then want to change the definition of 'marriage'.

Bit like the changing of 'gay'.

You might be missing the point. Of course same-sex marriage would be a change - it would lose gender-discrimination. The whole point is change. The word 'marriage' has been given to whole generations of people as the way to promise life-long commitment. When society says, "No, wait, you can't do that", they are both taking something special away from those couples, as well as implying that their love cannot possibly be as honest or as meaningful as that of other people. But it is these core things that same-sex couples wish to maintain - promise of lifelong commitment and expression and celebration of true, deep and meaningful love. Imagine if the possibility of marriage were taken away from you, or a heterosexual couple you knew?

So yes, same-sex couples asking for marriage want change, but the change they want is not be legally restricted by the criterion of their sexuality.

I think your article quote might be selectively taking quotes that some groups want to hear and using this to reinforce their own view. For example, Andrew Sullivan was quoted as if same-sex couples wanted to change the meaning of marriage to include promiscuity, and yet on another website he says:


http://www.slate.com/id/3642/

Quote is from Elizabeth Kristol, well known writer etc., on Sullivan's book

but wait, there is more,

Lesbian activist Paula Ettelbrick put it this way:

(ref. above)

There I was thinking that homosexuals just wanted to be treated the same as everyone else and here is an activist who wants to go even further and change the idea of marriage beyond recognition.

And you were right. Just are there are extreme feminists who think that women's rights means that they should have whole cities to themselves in which they are all lesbians, and just as there are extreme Christians and Muslims that have ridiculous proposals for secular societies, there are also extreme lesbians. But, as you noted, this is one activist with a different opinion inside a larger group asking for something similar. If we always viewed the world by its extreme cases it would be unrecognisable, and we would probably both have no place in it. Not all gun owners turn out to be Martin Bryant, for example.

I put in the other Andrew Sullivan quote just because I think that a lot of people's thoughts are taken out of context and shaped to fit whatever view the quoter has.