@Background Pony #5725  
The trouble is that ingrained expectations factor into that. Can you say that you’d feel the same way if you’d grown up in a world where marriage is strictly held as a religious institution and not a legal one?
 
My point here is that making marriage a legal matter is what makes it vulnerable. If it was a matter of religion alone, it would be equally protected under freedom of religion, but holding it as a legal entity creates expectations of it, expectations that may conflict with its intent.

@Turnways_Flip  
I disagree with most of what you just said. There are plenty of reasons why the state needs to recognize marriage, and reasons why I believe it’s in the interest of our society to avoid granting equal recognition to homosexual couples. However, I’ve already gone over all that to some extent here, so rehashing would be a bit tedious.

Y’know… this conversation is old as shit, but I think I want to have my say on it. To all those who say that gay marriage does not threaten “traditional” marriage: Actually, yes, it does, as a concept, threaten to dilute the meaning.
 
That’s not because it’s immoral, though, and it’s entirely the fault of the church and the legislature. I can’t imagine why an exception has been made in the core principle of “separation of church and state”, but frankly, marriage should not have any legal definition at all, and it certainly shouldn’t have any benefits attached to it. That should be an entirely separate institution. Marriage should be strictly a church function. And as with all religious traditions, it would then be practiced differently from church to church, and with nothing fixing it particularly firmly in our culture, would change more freely over time.
 
If marriage had never had a legal definition, gay couples might already have the same status as straight couples. If we could go back and undo that mistake, the problem would practically be solved, but unfortunately, it happened. And now any attempt to remove that connection is going to be met with church resistance. Of course, that’s true of any method of resolving the issue. Maybe making it work really is just a question of time passing. I suggest a push in the direction of replacing marriage with an identical institution. Over time, it’s the option that presents a win for everyone.

Your anti-gay social justice bullshit is funny to me.

@Background Pony #2536  
reads with sanity loosened a notch Hmmmmm… Ah! ok, Your NOT Anti-Gay. cool. ^^

I thought I had unsubscribed to this…

@Turbotowns  
>being against gay rights is WRONG WRONG WRONG
 
You tell me

@Background Pony #2536  
wait, so are you anti-gay or…?

@Background Pony #EFA1  
It’s a matter of right or wrong and being against gay rights is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I’m a christian, and I say… It’s OK to be gay!

@Carcer  
How about Taiwan?? IT might be ruled by the majority.

I just think that everyone should have their rights.  
But it’s just a matter of opinion.

Because someone just HAD to bring ponies into politics. (I’m pretty neutral politic-wise, it’s just that they really shouldn’t be put together.)

@Background Pony #F536  
Really? What tipped you off?

@Background Pony #F536  
Typically.

The maturity of discourse on the internet regarding this subject is just awful.

@Carcer  
This is true, and there have certainly been some cases of tyranny of the minority if you count the strange practice of judicial legislation, but generally speaking, popular support is needed. For example, after that Sandy Hook school shooting not too long ago, there were plenty of guys in D.C. who thought restricting certain gun rights would be a swell idea. The people of Colorado felt so strongly about this that they recalled several of their own legislators.

@Millennial Dan  
The rules are made by individuals with the largest backing, but the rules they make are by no means guaranteed to be the rules their backers would make and, to be honest, usually aren’t. In many systems the people in charge don’t even actually have a majority backing. When it comes to particularly divisive issues, there’s often an even split and whoever wins comes down to the person with the most advertising. Or the weather. What the majority wants is highly variable and subject to change at the slightest provocation, and the person they elect on Tuesday may not be the person they would have elected on Thursday…

@Ra1nbowCrasH  
>As if pointing this out now is at all relevant to anything.
 
Well excuse me, princess.

@Millennial Dan  
>not realizing I was being sarcastic.

@Carcer  
Nonsense. However you look at it, the majority still makes the rules, in several distinct ways. We have the initiative vote, which has been seeing quite a lot of use these days, the elections, and recalls, which have also been used recently. It’s obviously not a pure democracy by any stretch, and no one really wishes it was, but technically speaking the rules are still made by those backed by numbers, not the noisiest complainers.

@Carcer  
“generally it ensures that is it not the case that whatever a majority of the population wants is not what gets done”  
should read  
“generally it ensures that it is not the case that whatever a majority of the population wants is what gets done”  
obviously

@Millennial Dan  
No, your country is not ruled by the majority. I can’t think of anywhere that actually is ruled the majority. Your country is ruled by an elite political upper class and you choose who, from amongst them, you think will most accurately represent your personal views and interests - what we call representative democracy, which is what most people mean when they call somewhere a democracy. There are a lot of problems with this system, but generally it ensures that is it not the case that whatever a majority of the population wants is not what gets done.
 
In some cases, this is a good thing, because you avoid tyranny by majority and it can often be the case that whatever the uneducated majority thinks is a good idea would actually be a disaster if implemented as policy. On the other hand, you will frequently end up with systems where the elite you’re choosing from are all largely wedded to awful ideologies and you have no effective means of choosing outside them - for instance, in the UK there’s majority public support for renationalising many parts of our infrastructure that have been privatised over the last few decades, but our governments have been engaged in a long campaign of selling them off. In fact, they’re accelerating the process.
 
The point is, when you’ve got a representative democracy you don’t get to choose on any individual issue. You only get a package choice, and you try to choose the package that most closely matches your own - but there are inevitably differences between what you would like to happen and what your elected representative intends to do. The will of the majority doesn’t enter into any single concern.
 
I would here insert a informative image of Spider Jerusalem explaining voting for the edification of all, but it wouldn’t be in line with the image rating.

@DasHiveMind  
Government acknowledgment of marriage is necessary for happiness? Give me a break.
 
You missed my meaning, by the way. Whether you like it or not, this country IS ruled by the majority, by its very nature. And that’s not a bad thing in itself, it just means that the government will mirror the values of the largest number of people within its purvue at any given time, theoretically.
 
As such, you should be trying to win more people to your side, not frothing that you hate their guts for disagreeing with you.
 
By the way, no one is forcing you to continue to reply, so quit yer whining.

@Millennial Dan  
It’s hypocritical to hate some people but not hate others?  
I have no standard for when I think it’s okay to insult anyone at anytime should they feel the need it’s okay, I think anyone should be okay to insult anyone at anytime, as long as they are willing to accept they will be insulted back.
 
Also have you ever heard of this thing called the tyranny of the majority? The will of the people should not be the okay sign to let people do whatever they want, for awhile a majority of people in certain states though slavery was alright, and slavery was a state issue back then.  
The right to happiness and amendment that says the government, state or federal cannot discriminate against who this right applies to who it doesn’t to.
 
 
@soundtea  
Tell me about it, this picture makes me feel like I’ve been going on the same fucking thing for over a friggin year, everytime I see this in the comment box thingy I groan internally.