Blog on Same-Sex "Marriage," Atheism, and More

[Sovereign Dream]

It's just Catholic doctrine about sexuality.

It's actually Aristotle. You know, the most Catholic person in existence.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

It's actually Aristotle. You know, the most Catholic person in existence.

Which Catholicism took it from.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

It's the Catholic concept of natural law. Catholicism teaches that the purpose of sexual behavior in human beings is to unite a man and woman in marriage and to create new life, thereby becoming co-creators with God, as images of the Divine. So his arguments are religiously based at the source.

Yes, again, Aristotle was a huge Christian/Catholic supporter. Indeed, I'm told by many experts that he had a "Viva Pope John Paul II" and a "Vote for Bush" bumper sticker on the back of his mule.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

Which Catholicism took it from.

That's right, Aquinas adapted much of Aristotelian thought into Catholicism. Aquinas would say that he simply borrowed from the common sense of the Greeks. The point is moot, however. One obviously needn't be Catholic or Christian at all in order to make sense of this. Take Aristotle as proof.

 

[Alceste]

The fact that you referred to it as a "book" is telling, isn't it?

Yeah, it should tell you that I still call a gay marriage a marriage regardless of whether or not it can produce offspring.

 

[Alceste]

All that advice you offered in the beginning of this thread is depreciating in value at an exponential rate with every laughable response and comment you make.

I've often noticed that people who are unable to counter the points I raise instead dismiss them as "laughable".

Pro tip: The fact that it didn't take me 800 words to write it doesn't mean my reply doesn't demolish your argument.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

That's right, Aquinas adapted much of Aristotelian thought into Catholicism. Aquinas would say that he simply borrowed from the common sense of the Greeks. The point is moot, however. One obviously needn't be Catholic or Christian at all in order to make sense of this. Take Aristotle as proof.

Yes, I understand the claims of philosophers that promote the natural law viewpoint. However, the sexual faculty may have evolved for reproductive purposes, but that is obviously not its only purpose for existence. It also exists for the purpose of pleasure and bonding. Non-reproductive sexual behavior is found in pretty much all mammals that I can think of. They masturbate, have forms of oral sex, have anal sex and some species of female dolphin have another hole that exists solely for non-reproductive intercourse. Not to mention that the primary organ of female sexual pleasure, the clitoris (which is the only organ solely existing for sexual pleasure), is located outside of the vagina and vaginal penetration isn't enough on its own/is less pleasurable than clitoral stimulation is. So your view strikes me as extremely male/phallic centered.

Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, bonobos, are a bisexual species that use sex as a tool for social cohesion. They have homosexual sex, group sex, sex with pre-pubescent individuals, etc.

The point is that sex, in evolutionary terms, exists for many different reasons.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Again you miss the point.

I'm not missing your point; I'm rejecting it as irrelevant.

I'm not making any sort of probabilistic claim here. The point, once again, is that the sexual union between a man and a woman is procreative in nature. This is true even if conception doesn't occur, just as it would still be true that a football team is ordered towards winning even if it only wins 1/100 games.

Except it's not true.

If we're going to infer intent from design (which, as I pointed out, is loaded with logical fallacies but nevertheless seems to be your thing), then we need to acknowledge that human sexuality is less "ordered to procreation" than the sexuality of just about every other species on the planet and reflect this in the intent we infer behind it.

Edit: you talk about football teams. Are you familiar with the Toronto Argonauts? They're a football team that traces its history back to a rowing club (hence the "Argonaut" name). Football was just something they did in the off-season to keep in shape. As the years went on, they rowed less and less and played football more and more. These days, they don't row at all. At some point, even when they were still rowing a bit, it would have been reasonable to say that they were more a football team than a rowing club. It would have definitely been reasonable to say that when they divided their attention between rowing and football, they were less about rowing than the other rowing clubs that dedicated themselves just to rowing. At a certain point it would have become ridiculous to insist that they're "ordered toward rowing" and not football just because they rowed occasionally.

 

[LuisDantas]

You're not understanding what I mean by "ordered towards." To say that something is "ordered towards" something is just to say that it is such that it is directed towards a final cause of some sort.

By that yardstick, it takes a whole lot of bias to say that marriage is "ordered towards" offspring.

So an eye, for example, is clearly ordered towards sight. A mouth is clearly ordered towards masticating (or speaking, etc.). A football team is ordered towards winning. A penis is clearly ordered towards ejaculation into a vagina.

A pennis has another, more urgent if not necessarily more important, role as well.

Nor is it at all clear that it is ordered or directed to either of those two roles.

You really leave a lot to be desired far as supporting evidence for your claims go.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

Yes, I understand the claims of philosophers that promote the natural law viewpoint. However, the sexual faculty may have evolved for reproductive purposes, but that is obviously not its only purpose for existence. It also exists for the purpose of pleasure and bonding. Non-reproductive sexual behavior is found in pretty much all mammals that I can think of. They masturbate, have forms of oral sex, have anal sex and some species of female dolphin have another hole that exists solely for non-reproductive intercourse. Not to mention that the primary organ of female sexual pleasure, the clitoris (which is the only organ solely existing for sexual pleasure), is located outside of the vagina and vaginal penetration isn't enough on its own/is less pleasurable than clitoral stimulation is. So your view strikes me as extremely male/phallic centered.

Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, bonobos, are a bisexual species that use sex as a tool for social cohesion. They have homosexual sex, group sex, sex with pre-pubescent individuals, etc.

The point is that sex, in evolutionary terms, exists for many different reasons.

That's all irrelevant. Essentialism/Natural Law theory isn't incompatible with anything you just mentioned. In fact, one can only make sense of the matters you mention vis-a-vis Aristotelian final causality.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

That's all irrelevant. Essentialism/Natural Law theory isn't incompatible with anything you just mentioned. In fact, one can only make sense of the matters you mention vis-a-vis Aristotelian final causality.

No. What science tells us about anatomy and behavior in regards to this subject is hardly "irrelevant".

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Do you think I'd defend the position if I didn't understand it? Of course I know what it means. On the other hand, noting by the "lol but, like, conception doesn't occur every time a man and a woman have sex lol bigot" comments, it's pretty clear that everyone else is having some trouble grasping a thought I've already tried to dumb down 15 times or so.

Ok, but if you know what it means, why didn't you answer the question?

You're once again confusing marriage's public purpose and the private reasons why individuals marry.

No. The other functions I mentioned were also public purposes of marriage. And, of course, you still have no grounds to substantiate your normative claim here, that this one public purpose (among several) is not only somehow more correct or right, but so much so to the exclusion of others.

No, this is a mere matter of fact claim. Let the intentional point-missing continue though, by all means.

Alright, then tell me what it would even mean for SSM to be "false", if your normative claim is accepted.

If the public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another

It isn't, as we're noted several times, so, as we've also noted several times, the consequent here is irrelevant. But let's look at it anyways, just for shts and giggles.

then, just like a women's debate club disallowing a man to become one of its members, it is not unjust to disallow two men or two women from "marrying."

Yeah, you're ignoring the fact that, unlike a women's club, marriage is the only game in town. There is no alternative. Excluding them (not only separating, but excluding entirely) from a legal process which bestows distinct benefits, as well as being considered fundamental to a free and happy life by many people, absolutely is unjust, unless "unjust" means something different to you than it does to the rest of the English speaking world. And not only is it morally reprehensible, its explicitly ruled out by our Constitution.

But, again, I've mentioned this about 16 times or so.

Unfortunately, as you're no doubt learning, repetition doesn't make a bad argument or false claim somehow transform into a good or true one.

Are you asking whether I find it surprising that the state has an interest in marriage because of something to do with children?

No, you should read more carefully. Since you've claimed that the only aspect of marriage that concerns the state is procreation, then why does the state regulate other aspects of marriage that has nothing to do with children, such as taxation and inheritance?

GotMeSoGood.jpg

Indeed. Commence backpedaling. Next time you might be more careful not to advance examples that contradict your own argument.

This is simply to attempt to defy biology by pretending it doesn't exist

Biology is not normative.

asinine equals signs

Yeah, I have a hard time thinking of anything more asinine than equality and tolerance.

Public policy must generalize and promote the optimal precisely because of the nature of public policy!

Well no, public policy prohibits the bad or harmful, not the non-optimal. If that were the case, most things we do on a daily basis would be illegal. This is simply a false dilemma.

Similarly, there might be some very rare circumstances in which a child might "better off" with a same-sex couple or with a single parent

There clearly are, and they are less rare than you'd like to believe. There is no necessary connection between gender and quality of parenting.

but that doesn't thereby mean that it ought to be public policy to place children in the care of same-sex couples or single parents.

That's not really relevant. The question is not whether such arrangements are optimal, but whether they are harmful. And they are not. In many cases they are better than the alternative (as in virtually every case where the alternative is foster care).

Yes, do tell me more of this red herring you had for breakfast.

You may want to check your Relevance-Radar, it isn't working properly.

That's actually precisely what is happening. Male homosexual couples, for example, pay surrogates to take to term some of their sperm and some of the eggs they bought from a genetically-endowed woman.

And that would clearly NOT be a case of taking anyone's parents away. We're talking about precisely what I said- cases where homosexuals are allowed to adopt, be surrogates, etc- cases that do not involve taking any child's parents away, but pretty much the exact opposite.

You're thinking about this the wrong way. I could construct two scenarios in a different way. What if the lesbians didn’t have a stable relationship, couldn’t keep steady jobs, experienced domestic violence in their home, and often used drugs. The other adoptive option was a married heterosexual couple (one a doctor and the other a teacher), who lived in the same home for 18 years, and who had already adopted a child. Given those two options, wouldn’t it be better for the child to be adopted by the heterosexual couple? Sure, but what’s that prove? That you can construct any combination of scenarios designed to prove that a certain set of people would be better parents.

The question that needs to be asked is whether a child who needs to be adopted is best served by a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple -- all things being equal. The question focuses on the needs of the child, not the wants of homosexuals who are politically motivated to normalize same-sex marriage and parenting. The answer is straightforward: decades of published research in psychology, social science, and medicine demonstrate that children do best when raised by a mother and father (especially the biological parents) in a long-term marriage. That’s because a mother and a father each provide a unique and important contribution to their role as parents. Children who are raised – for example – in fatherless families suffer, on average, in every measure of well-being. They have higher levels of physical and mental illness, educational difficulties, poverty, substance abuse, criminal behavior, loneliness, and physical and sexual abuse.

You're still missing the point. Your argument relies on there being some inherent harm in same-sex couples raising children. Unfortunately, there really isn't, and in many cases, its going to be better for the child than the alternative. Thus, by advocating we have less candidates for adoptive parents (by excluding SS couples) you're effectively harming the children you claim to be concerned with, since some of them may be stuck in foster care or an orphanage because willing adoptive couples are being excluded arbitrarily. Worse, none of this entails anything about SSM; if there were legitimate concerns regarding same-sex couples raising children, that would be more properly rememdied by amending adoption laws, while nevertheless allowing homosexuals the (Constitutionally, common sense, and morally guaranteed) right to marry. Your proposal is equivalent to whacking a mosquito with a sledgehammer.

*Also, I see the cat's sort of out of the bag regarding this "ordered towards procreation" nonsense; unfortunately, teleology doesn't help us here, because marriage was not created by any agent for a given purpose. But even so, you still can't justify your normative leap here: i.e. going from what marriage was originally for, to what marriage must or should be for. Just because marriage originally functioned primarily for X does not entail that we are under any duty or obligation to reserve marriage for X.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

I'm not missing your point; I'm rejecting it as irrelevant.

Glorious refutation. Much good.

Except it's not true.

If we're going to infer intent from design (which, as I pointed out, is loaded with logical fallacies but nevertheless seems to be your thing),

Loaded with logical fallacies. Much refute.

then we need to acknowledge that human sexuality is less "ordered to procreation" than the sexuality of just about every other species on the planet and reflect this in the intent we infer behind it.

Much point missing again. Much head hurt. Much no bother no longer.

Edit: you talk about football teams. Are you familiar with the Toronto Argonauts? They're a football team that traces its history back to a rowing club (hence the "Argonaut" name). Football was just something they did in the off-season to keep in shape. As the years went on, they rowed less and less and played football more and more. These days, they don't row at all. At some point, even when they were still rowing a bit, it would have been reasonable to say that they were more a football team than a rowing club. It would have definitely been reasonable to say that when they divided their attention between rowing and football, they were less about rowing than the other rowing clubs that dedicated themselves just to rowing. At a certain point it would have become ridiculous to insist that they're "ordered toward rowing" and not football just because they rowed occasionally.

P1.) Dude, have you even heard of the Argonauts? Like dude they're like a football team who was once like a rowing club. But they're like not a rowing club anymore rofl.

C: Therefore, essentialism/Aristotelian final causality/Natural Law is false.

Much refute. Much deduction.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

That's all irrelevant. Essentialism/Natural Law theory isn't incompatible with anything you just mentioned. In fact, one can only make sense of the matters you mention vis-a-vis Aristotelian final causality.

If your argument requires you to drag Aristotelian causality, essentialism, and natural law out of the scrap heap of history, that's a very bad sign, and you should probably save yourself the trouble.

 

[Sovereign Dream]

By that yardstick, it takes a whole lot of bias to say that marriage is "ordered towards" offspring.

For reasons that I needn't mention here (it would be above everyone's pay-grade), one cannot make sense of anything without something like final causality. That's hardly an "unattractive" yardstick, eh?

A pennis has another, more urgent if not necessarily more important, role as well.

Of course. The penis is also ordered towards the expelling of waste. You'll now notice that I never committed myself to the supposition: "all faculties have only one goal that they are aimed towards." Indeed, a faculty's having more than one end is perfectly compatible with what I've said and what essentialism commits one to.

Nor is it at all clear that it is ordered or directed to either of those two roles.

No, it's pretty clear. Unless you're delusional. For example, the penis clearly isn't ordered towards respiration are they? It also isn't ordered towards mastication, or speech, or thinking, or pumping blood, etc. Again, this is just painfully obvious.

You really leave a lot to be desired far as supporting evidence for your claims go.

Ditto.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

No, it's pretty clear. Unless you're delusional.

Honestly, you think you can assume that points in contention are just obvious, and that anyone who disagrees is delusional? You do know what this is called, yes?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Glorious refutation. Much good.

Loaded with logical fallacies. Much refute.

Much point missing again. Much head hurt. Much no bother no longer.

P1.) Dude, have you even heard of the Argonauts? Like dude they're like a football team who was once like a rowing club. But they're like not a rowing club anymore rofl.

C: Therefore, essentialism/Aristotelian final causality/Natural Law is false.

Much refute. Much deduction.

Well, at least we're finally at the point where you've come to the realization that you've run out of rational responses.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

It really isn't hard to grasp, folks. I've tried to dumb everything down enough as it is. Are you guys seriously this obstinate?

Speaking only for myself, I'm not obstinate. I'm just slightly gay. :rainbow1:

 

[Enai de a lukal]

If your argument requires you to drag Aristotelian causality, essentialism, and natural law out of the scrap heap of history, that's a very bad sign, and you should probably save yourself the trouble.

Is this maybe some sort of assignment for school or something, where you're supposed to construct an argument based on the three least tenable philosophic positions you can think of? Otherwise this is just a total headscratcher; let's see, you will find my argument convincing provided you already accept Aristotelian teleology, essentialism, and natural law, and/or agree with the conclusion already... Um, OK.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Speaking only for myself, I'm not obstinate. I'm just slightly gay. :rainbow1:

I'm the opposite: I'm straight and obstinate.