howeird: (Default)
howard stateman ([personal profile] howeird) wrote2008-10-30 12:27 am

Side-step

This, or words similar to this, has been popping up all over LJ lately:

Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

It misses the point. Now, I don't happen to agree with the point, but it irks me that people on my side of the fence don't bother to know their enemies. The point is it hurts the institution of marriage. It doesn't harm any individual marriages. I thought about going into gory detail on why, but I frankly don't like these people enough to defend them that thoroughly.

[identity profile] didjiman.livejournal.com 2008-10-30 11:01 am (UTC)(link)
You are just a cranky pants.

Logic has no place. Otherwise, we would not have Propositions in the first place.

When the opponents tell lies about children will be taught about gay marriage and such non-sense, I'll be damned to get swift-boated.

[identity profile] damiana-swan.livejournal.com 2008-10-30 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)
I think their point is that the "destroying the institution of marriage" argument is specious. If gay marriage truly did cause harm to the concept of marriage as a whole, it would *have* to be causing harm to individual marriages. Which is why the question "what specific harm is this causing to YOUR marriage"?

Think of it as a scientific experiment, where you're testing for the existence of a condition which is invisible except for its effects on the real world. The only way you can prove it is to look for those effects. If those effects don't exist, chances are your hypothesis is wrong.