Omar

The positive answer is that that's how many people you need to procreate. The prescriptive one is that it doesn't matter, but for simplicity's sake we should probably call those less common cases something else. They should sign some sort of contract, just like marriage is essentially a contract with a lot of fluff. Again, marriage is just a contract; all it really defines is property rights. What you're asking is whether incest is okay. I would say yes, for consensual cases.

Tread carefully. I'm pretty sure you're getting played.

I don't think there are enough homophobes on TIF to keep arguing ITT.

At the risk of attributing malicious intent to this girl, she lied to you. At the very least, she said something very meaningful and only mulled it over for a week. That is how careful she is about your relationship. Again. Pick yourself up. [Edit] But anyway, this isn't "inspiring". You're not even deciding what you're doing. Start doing crazy shit when you've got your normal shit sorted.

Oh, [bleep] off, this isn't about romance. You fell for a chick who told you she loved after you met her after, like, one week. I was all about that drug-fuelled hedonism, but you weren't thinking. The girl doesn't know what she wants, or if she does she doesn't want to tell you. She's not putting any effort into this; she doesn't respect you enough to pay attention to what you're saying. Pick yourself up.

Ugh. A gay couple going into a church and asking for a traditional marriage is like a woman going into a hospital and asking for a vasectomy. Classic case of positive vs. negative freedom, by the way.

It shouldn't. Marrying people is a service, not a duty.

Whatever, so long as there are no policy implications you could invent new words for all I care.

So, to summarize: - you think the benefits which come with marriage are meant to be targeted to people who have or are trying to have children, and that marital status is the proxy by which the government verifies that. - with this in mind, it would be absurd to allow gays to "marry", because the way the government defines it that has a lot to do with procreation, which for obvious reasons doesn't apply here - but marriage shouldn't be defined as a union for procreation to begin with because social engineering isn't what the government should be doing - therefore marriage needs to be redefined as union between two people and then gays should be allowed to marry, but then that begs the question: why would anyone want to do it considering it doesn't actually change anything as a matter of fact? My answer to that last question is that it doesn't matter and that heterosexuals and homosexuals alike are entitled to their strange rituals. :P

Sees, do you want the benefits to married couples removed?

Sees, would you be cool with gay marriage if the benefits destined to couples who procreate were abolished?

That's excellent. [Edit] Welp he removed the quote.

Nope. Democracy is mob rule. If people decided what marriage is, then why would you need the government to do it? Why are we even having this argument? By now people would be calling whatever they think marriage is "marriage". The people is not the government. The government is a handful of people with guns. My point is that you don't need a monopoly on the initiation of force to define marriage. A government isn't simply an organism we use to do what we all want to do; it does what we all want to do, but can't individually, or at least that's what The Social Contract says; it realizes the intersection of the will of every individual, and in exchange every individual gives up his right to not do what he asked the government to do (obviously, or else he is refusing to have his desires realized, which contradictory). Marriage doesn't fall under this, so there's no reason why government should define it to begin with. When, however, the people that make up the government decide to give those who are married a financial benefit, only then do you need the definition to come from the government. Remove the financial benefit, and you can have any kind of marriage you want. The financial benefit doesn't pass Rousseau's definition. If everyone wanted married people to have more money, you wouldn't have to threaten people with jail time if they evade taxes in order to collect that money. It would then be called charity, not public policy. So that part is illegitimate, and the power the government arrogates itself (I have never given a bunch of people with guns authority to do this!) to define marriage because of this is equally illegitimate. [Edit] To expand on RW's post:

Makes sense.

If you get the fiscal side of the issue sorted, there's no reason for the government to worry about defining marriage anymore--not that it was ever a fruitful pursuit; marriage is a concept we have created, so the accurate definition is the one we give it. If you want to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, that's fine, but it doesn't mean the homosexual equivalent should be banned. I think Ring_World hit the nail right on the head: prima facie, marriage isn't something that needs to be defined by government, but if it decides to make "married people" a special interest group, then the definition starts to matter, because financial incentives are in play. So if you're really (really?) going to blame someone for belittling their love, blame the government for bringing money into it.

Were you just keeping your opinion to yourself, this wouldn't be a problem. When you ask a government to make use of force in order to stop gays that would like to marry, it's not a matter of opinion anymore; what you do and vote for affects me.

Not here. Most people realize that there's no room for you to sit because they've set their bags down, pick them up, and apologize profusely. On occasion, you'll see a selfish dick, but I've only seen it once or twice.

The most productive economies throughout history have been War Economies which typically tend to be anything but "free". Slap me right in the face on the day when I cease to be amazed that people think destruction makes people better off. You've been involved in a broken window fallacy.

Well, if you deserve (i.e. you have a positive right to) an education, the books aren't going to grow on trees; someone will have to pay for their production, which means that their negative property right will be sacrificed. If you have a right not to have others stop you from getting an education (i.e. a negative right to education), that doesn't necessarily mean other people owe you one. So no, it's as good an example of positive rights being incoherent as any.

So if people get married and don't have children they're not married? :|

Rights are negative, not positive. Rights end where other rights start, but positive rights imply "overlaps" (for example, you can't have strict rights to education and strict property rights, because you have to take the money from somewhere). So the correct way to do this is not so much that people have a right to marriage; it's that people have a right to be exempted from others' imposition of definitions of marriage. I challenge that claim, but FWIW if you're a strict natural rights libertarian the consequences of freedom are irrelevant.

Yeah, as RW said Runescape is illegal but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, right?

You can buy 94% alcohol at the Société des Alcools du Québec. It's just called Alcool, and it comes around to being about 78% more ethanol per dollar than Smirnoff vodka, which makes it pretty much optimal for jungle juice. There's always Everclear, although getting your hands on that can be a little difficult in most places.

Right, I'll just go back to OT and wait for someone to say something.

Why you guys are getting so worked up about a very poor definition of insanity is the real question, I think.