Animyr said:
Are you seriously going with the "it's not the person, it's the lifestyle" thing there? Erm, yeah.
[snip]
Card is saying that only his definition of marriage is valid ,and apparently so valid that if it's not given exclusive rights under the law, the government should be overthrown. Since he says "regardless of law" I'm assuming he's talking about the religious definition of marriage. But there's multiple religions with multiple definitions of marriage (like Muslims, or even other Mormons and polygamy) so he seems to be saying here that the government ought to respect his religious views alone (and that only his viewpoint deserves to be respected). Which, besides breaking the first amendment, sounds pretty disrespectful to every other viewpoint (regardless of whether or not those viewpoints deserve respect).
Hi Animyr,
No, I haven't spoke about person vs. lifestyle distinction.
Card correctly distinguishes between unions that can have children and others that cannot. This distinction is rational, given that marriage confers
additional rights to those who contract it, some of which have a cost for the taxpayers. The (potential) contribution of new individuals that marriage
can provide is the reason of those rights, rights that individual citizens that pay their taxes and are otherwise valued members of society don't enjoy.
Of course yes, this is discrimination - in the actual meaning of the word, not in the negative connotation that some people attempt to give it.
One could argue that discriminating between different situations is one of the goals of law as a whole.
Animyr said:
But even Card says that "We do not believe that homosexuals, by entering into a marriage, are personally hurting anybody" so what's the problem, then?(Of course he's also claimed that all homosexuals are pedophiles, so it's hard to say for sure what he thinks or why).
The problem is one of both definition and fairness. If you completely remove the role of procreation from marriage, I see no practical reason for which married people are entitled to those additional rights.
If two men can marry, despite having no biological ability to reproduce (which
some argue is the government?s stake in heterosexual marriage) and without having both genders represented as role models in the household (which
others argue is the government?s stake in heterosexual marriage), then certainly two men and a woman can marry.
No one can credibly argue that three people cannot be in love.
Raising children is hard. Committing to stay together as a couple for the children's benefit is hard - many people, myself included, agreed that monogamy is fundamentally against our male genetic predisposition of spreading our DNA as much as possible.
As a geek and gamer I find it difficult to limit my hobby in order to dedicate to my family the time they deserve, but I do it anyway because I know it's the right thing - toward my parents who have done the same for me, toward my ancestors that gave their blood and life for our freedom, toward society as a whole.
I refuse to accept that this is completely equivalent to two people that stay together simply because they love each other.