Posted: Apr 22, 2012 6:02 am
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GENERAL MODNOTE Crocodile Gandhi submitted his post for approval well before the 72 hour deadline, but he will not be available to actually post it himself, as he is away from computer access for several hours today. Therefore, I shall submit his approved post on his behalf. Durro |
I recently heard a man in the street make a spirited defense of gay marriage.
He said, "All people in society should be [REDACTED]. When this does not occur, society inevitably declines toward [REDACTED]. It is only in the absence of [REDACTED] that we will faulter as a species. To the day I die I will fight for [REDACTED].
The four redacted sections (those playing at home will notice that I have correctly identified the number of redacted sections, unlike my opponent) were Pineapple, Wakeboards, Richard Dean Anderson, and Ham Sandwiches. And the man speaking those words was, of course, homeless and stark raving mad.
Now, my own version of debate MADlibs is obviously utter nonsense, but it is probably just about as relevant to the debate as what Lion had written. Aside from the fact that we not debating the merits of monagamy/polygamy, the words spoken by Chief Justice Bauman only serve to support same-sex marriage, which is a monogamous union.
In my opening post I stated that I would be arguing that there is no good reason not to allow gay marriage. I also stated that the arguments that my opponent proposed were likely to be largely irrelevant with respect to the debate topic. It looks like I was not far wrong with this prediction.
So, let's take a look at some of Lion's arguments. The main thrust of Lion's post seems to be an agrument from increased workload. It is almost certainly true that legalising gay marriage will increase the overall workload of legislators, public servants, marriage celebrants and lawyers. So fucking what? It is necessarliy true that workplace saftey laws vastly increase the workload of companies to ensure the safety of their workers, yet such laws have also have the beneficial effect of vastly decreasing the number of deaths and injuries in the workplace (http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/history/index.htm). In the area of social change, the workload of legislators and lawyers were vastly increased by changes in Australian law in 1967. The effect of this change was that the Commonwealth was able to know make laws with respect to aboriginal people, as well as counting them in the census, whereas previously they were "counted" under the Flora and Fauna Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian ... boriginals)). I would be interested to know if Lion believes this change should not have been made due to the immensely increased workload resulting from the Commonwealth being able to make laws for aboriginal people and no longer consider them animals. I stated previously that gay marriage does not materially affect anyone. It appears that Lion has proved me wrong. Gay marriage, it seems, may make lawyers some more money. Something that I'm sure they will deeply hate.
Lion then moved onto talking about divorce, which is entirely irrelevant to the proposition of allowing marriage. Whether there were detrimental effects from making divorce easier does not relate to whether we should allow gay people to marry eachother. Furthermore, Lion completely failed to show how the supposed negative effects of making divorce easier (single parent families, children born out of wedlock, multiple marriages, divorce rates etc) are actually negatives. Merely stating that there were children born out of wedlock does nothing to show how children being born out of wedlock is a bad thing. It is unsurprising that divorce rates increased as a result of relaxing the laws with regard to divorce. Yet Lion has failed to demonstrate or even state that this is a bad thing, let alone explain how it is in any way relevant to the notion of legalising gay marriage. Neither does Lion use any reasoning to show that allowing gay marriage would increase single parent families, children being born out of wedlock or multiple marriages. If Lion believes that the presentation of random and irrelevant statistics are a worthy debating tactic, I may as well start producing charts showing the average wage in Zimbabwe or the most commonly bought dishwashing detergent in Poland.
Lion argues that allowing gay marriage will tie up the courts. He also cites the case of Judge Walker's decision ("one judge versus 7 million Californians"). If Lion wants the courts to be freed up, I would suggest that he contact those looking to appeal Judge Walker's decision and ask them to cease this action immediately, lest the courts be overburdened.
Lion argues that the concept of marriage will become unrecognisable to anyone other than lawyers. This is clearly nonsense. The concept of marriage will be no more or less confusing than the concept of a voting citizen was when women were included within that concept. However, seeing as Lion appears to be slow to grasp these things, I'll break it down for him: At the moment it's one man and one woman (aside from where gay marriage is legal). If changed, it would be also be for two men or two women. So confusing. So hard to grasp.
All of the above arguments from Lion seem to stem from the legality arm of his irrelevant (if you're getting sick of seeing this word, get used to it) Bible verse. The verse for which I apparently cannot ignore the consequences of trying to re-word. Of course, I wonder how Lion feels about those who work on Sundays re-wording the Ten Commandments. Unless he wants that to be illegal too. I should hope that Lion moves onto the other professions (philosopher, biologist, and Rabbi) soon. After seeing how miserable his attempt at arguing the only relevant angle (the law), I expect some very interesting arguments, particularly in the biology section.
I stated in my opening post that I planned to limit the positive arguments for legalising gay marriage. This is because I believe that the paucity of value in the negative arguments is one of the greatest positive arguments. Why is this? Allowing one group to engage in an activity or hold a privilege, while denying another group from doing so without reason for this denial is discrimination. It is what I would call 'unfair discrimination'. There are some areas in which we discriminate, yet that is because there is good reason to do so. For example, not allowing convicted murderers to become policemen. Of course, we don't often refer to this as dscrimination. However, when there is no good reason to deny a group of people from engaging in an activity based on a particular trait, this is unfair discrimination.
While Lion likely believes that he has good reasons to deny gay people from entering a marriage with the partner of their choice, I hope that those reading will be able to notice that what he has offered to date has either been irrelevant, or merely assertions that have not been followed with the necessary reasoning to substantiate why legalising gay marriage would actually cause problems. And, if Lion thinks that such unfair discrimination is negated by the existence of civil unions (even those which carry with them all of the rights of marriage), I would ask Lion to explain whether or not he is supportive of this image: http://www.sistasthemusical.com/images/ ... -equal.jpg
Lion's disingenuous position so far throughout this debate has saddened me greatly. While I understand that the outcome of the debate rests solely on the merits of the arguments held within, it displeases me that he appears to be arguing at odds with the positions that we know he holds. Namely, that while he obviously holds marriage as necessary institution that should be honoured and respected, he has argued in a manner thus far that can easily lead one to the conclusion that all marriage is bad for society (or at least asserted and implied it without following through on any of his disjointed thoughts). For this reason, my future posts will include more positive arguments for gay marriage, as I can see that knocking over Lion's irrelevancies is simply child's play.