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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (71311)	8/2/2003 7:14:56 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

Thinking about it, one (not the only, but one) reason I object to gay marraige as such is that marriage is a clearly defined relationship. Homoesexuals are welcome to have other relationships and call them what they want to, but why do they have to take over the name of marriage for their relationships? It's as though men who had children insisted on being called mothers because motherhood has a special connotation they wanted to share. You could object that "mother" has a clear definition as a woman who gives birth, but they then object that that's a sexist definition and should be abandoned. Definitions are only meaningful if they do two things: include some things, and exclude other things. Every definition is exclusive. Every definition is discriminatory. Without exclusion, wihtout discrimination, we have no definitions, and therefore no useful language. Marriage is no different. It means, and has meant for millenia, one thing -- a certain defined relationship between one man and one woman. Period, end of discussion. (There are, of course, other definitions, such as "the marriage of true minds," but I'm talking about the relationship of two humans that is sanctioned by the church and/or the state, as I'm sure you're aware.) If homesexuals are allowed to marry, then we are going to need, I think, to create whole new terms, one for traditional male-female marriages, and another one for same-sex marriages. Then there will be another fight over the same-sex couples wanting to be included in the two-sex term. I do understand that language does and should evolve, but when it does so, it should evolve in ways that increase precision, not in ways that decrease precision. As far as I'm concerned, homosexuals can have relationships which have the legal benefits of marriage (although I think we will find in twenty or thirty years that the social experiment of homosexual couples adopting children has been a terrible social mistake). But they don't need to redefine a term that has worked and has had clear meaning for millenia. Let them get their own term, and leave mine and ours alone.