Knowing the enemy

[kengr]

From a comment on tumblr:

A lot of people are saying that Gays being aloud to marry will cause people to marry animals and objects. Well they already do that !

No, it's not that they think allowing gay marriage (actually, allowing legal recognition of such, I first attended a gay marriage ceremony in the 70s!) will *cause* people to marry animals/objects/etc.

It's that they think gays marrying is *morally equivalent* to those other things. And thus, if we give legal recognition of same sex marriages, we'd not be able to deny legal recognition to the others.

It's an important point, because it makes a *huge* difference in the arguments that you can *try* to change their minds with. It also avoids you looking "stupid" to these folks by arguing against a stand they don't have.

Comments

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that many anti-gay-marriage folks really don't want biblical style marriages made legal here; for whatever their reasons they don't want to see legal polygamy in the modern world.

Which is fine with me; they're entitled to their own opinions. But I think people using the phrase 'biblical marriage' should read the Bible and find out what it actually says about marriage.

[kengr]

I'm pretty sure that you are at least as well inforemed as I am regarding the Reformation and the things Martin Luther and others were objecting to in the Catholic Church's practices.

One was that people were discouraged (strongly) from reading the Bible on their own and drawing their own conclusions from it. That was something that only "trained professionals were supposed to do. Because you might get "confused" (and start thinking you knew better than your priest).

Well, guess what a major "tenet" of most of the bad kind of fundie churches is...