Is a dog with three legs a bad dog? Is a triangle with two sides still a triangle or is it a defective triangle? Perhaps if we just expand the definition of triangle a bit we can have square triangles.
There is a point of view that holds that to define something we must say something definitive about it and that to say that we are expanding or changing a definition makes no sense if we don’t know what it is that is being changed.
It is of the essence or nature of a Euclidean triangle to be a closed plane figure with the straight sides, and anything with this essence must have a number of properties, such as having angles that add up to 180 degrees. These are objective facts that we discover rather than invent; certainly it is notoriously difficult to make the opposite opinion at all plausible. Nevertheless, there are obviously triangles that fail to live up to this definition. A triangle drawn hastily on the cracked plastic sheet of a moving bus might fail to be completely closed or to have perfectly straight sides, and thus its angles will add up to something other than 180 degrees. Even a triangle drawn slowly and carefully on paper with an art pen and a ruler will have subtle flaws. Still, the latter will far more closely approximate the essence of triangularity than the former will. It will accordingly be a better triangle than the former. Indeed, we would naturally describe the latter as a good triangle and the former as a bad one. This judgment would be completely objective; it would be silly to suggest that we were merely expressing a personal preference for straightness or for angles that add up to 180 degrees. The judgment simply follows from the objective facts about the nature of triangles. This example illustrates how an entity can count as an instance of a certain type of thing even if it fails perfectly to instantiate the essence of that type of thing; a badly drawn triangle is not a non-triangle, but rather a defective triangle. And it illustrates at the same time how there can be a completely objective, factual standard of goodness and badness, better and worse. To be sure, the standard in question in this example is not a moral standard. But from the A-T point of view, it illustrates a general notion of goodness of which moral goodness is a special case. And while it might be suggested that even this general standard of goodness will lack a foundation if one denies, as nominalists and other anti-realists do, the objectivity of geometry and mathematics in general, it is (as I have said) notoriously very difficult to defend such a denial.
– Edward Feser. Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good
This raises a number of interesting questions, by no means limited to the following:
What is the fact/value distinction.
Whether values can be objective.
The relationship between objective goodness and moral goodness.
And of course, whether a three-legged dog is still a dog.
Meanwhile:
Let me get this straight. You are saying that evidence suggests that when a legal concept that affects men and women is redefined, the redefinition affects hardly anyone, and when someone says that the redefinition affects everyone (because it so happens that society is 100% made up of men and women) then it’s unfounded prejudice?
I find your statement deeply flawed.
I say the redefinition affects heterosexual couples not at all and reinforces stable monogamous relationships for same-sex couples. Produce any evidence that anyone is adversely affected (except for moral indignation) by these measures.
I just fail to see any coherent objection to same-sex marriage that is not based on religious prejudice and homophobia. You have certainly not made one.
Well, what is the evidence for the latter? Without evidence, sure, it’s unfounded, and to make judgements without evidence is the essence of prejudice.
Sorry, but I don’t believe you. You have run out of the good faith quota that would permit me to answer.
Edit: Ha, and just when I thought it can’t get any worse:
The “latter” happens to be my point that society is 100% made up of men and women. So, what is the evidence for it? I apologise, but henceforth I am unable to take you seriously. Possibly forever.
In any case, you’ve denied the antecedent (what is it about this thread?!)
Sure, extending the legal definition of marriage to include same sex couples “affects men and women” because both men and women can belong to same sex couples.
But it does not follow ” that the redefinition affects everyone (because it so happens that society is 100% made up of men and women)”, because while all gay people are men or women, not all men or women are gay.
I genuinely struggle (and I do try) to see a rational consequential difficulty with allowing marriage to be inclusive of same-sex couples.
Suppose we insisted that they could only be regarded as “friends” (complete with rabbit-ear scare-quotes every time we said it)? Would this cause them to abandon such relationships and sire children, for the good of continuing society? I seriously doubt it. And I think heterosexual couples have got that one covered! Moreover, I think some societies would benefit from a reduction in birth rate.
It always boils down to a semantic objection (apparently …).
So I guess you’ve spotted that the definition you would otherwise have offered would have been circular?
OK, I concede it was a loaded question. The fact that it is, however, underscores my point.
And perhaps a fading away of the malign influence of the Catholic church (and let’s not overlook the activities of some US fundamentalist “missionaries”) in poor and underdeveloped countries.
You seemed to have missed my second post when you added your ETA:
Okay, Lizzie, because I have time right now, but this is the last thing I am putting up with from you.
Tell me how the definition of bachelor as “unmarried male” is circular. As per Wittgenstein, it’s “tautological”, yes, but his opinion has done nothing to affect the definition, so maybe he was wrong. If your objection is Wittgensteinian, it’s overruled.
And not all are married either. The amount of gays and unmarried etc. does not affect my point. Watch closely:
Marriage is a legal concept about men and women. Therefore, when marriage is redefined, men and women are (legally) affected.
It doesn’t get any simpler and more straightforward than this. You can add gays into the population, but it does nothing to change the fact that the redefinition affects men and women – gays are none other than a certain fringe group within the same men and women. The definition may be changed so as to extend it to gays or to remove gays from the legal definition, or we may redefine the concept whichever other way, such redefinitions logically affect all men and women inasmuch as the concept is about them. Just like absolutely any change in traffic regulations affects everybody in traffic – you will know it when you get into the situation that some rule you thought you knew has been changed. (As to the traditional core of the definition of marriage, we already had this debate.)
My point was so modest, self-evident, and trivial, that there’s nothing to argue here. Alan Fox’s retort that this is an “unsupported allegation” and an “unfounded prejudice”, well, it’s worth leaving it to its own merits.
Erik claims:
How? People who are already married are unaffected. Anyone who wishes can now become married to their chosen partner. Where’s the harm? I can certainly see benefit for both the straight and gay couple. Do you see “affected by” and “benefit from” as synonymous?
So a beneficial change that affects heterosexual couples not at all adversely and benefits them via the added stability etc flowing from the change is synonymous with “being affected”? Fair enough. I think I see why your “argument” is not getting much serious consideration.
I asked you to define “husband” and “wife” in your definition of marriage as “husband + wife”.
But not all men and women. Only gay men and women who now, if they choose, can get legally married to the partner of their choice.
Sure. But not ALL men and women. Your comment that:
is irrelevant because only that subset that comprised of gay people who want to marry, is affected.
No it is not like that at all. If you change the traffic regulations for all road users, then all road users are affected. If you merely allow a small set of people who did not used to be allowed to use the road, but who are perfectly safe to drive, to use the road, then only they are affected, not everyone else.
Unless you count the slight increase in congestion. But I don’t think you are talking about a run on wedding cakes here, are you?
It is far from “modest” and not at all “self-evident” not indeed “trivial” to say that allowing gay people to marry the partner of their choice affects “100%” of people, when it clearly affects virtually no-one other than the gay people who previously couldn’t marry and now can. A highly non-trivial result.
Erik, “marriage” is not like “bachelor” in being easily definable. Very few words are, actually; that’s why “bachelor” is such a widely-used example. Even it is starting to change, however. My guess is that in 10 or fifteen years, you won’t be able to use “bachelor” either.
Sorry.
Also, FWIW, the Wittgensteinian stuff regarding chairs that Elizabeth posted and the exerpts regarding family resemblance that I linked to (and you no doubt read carefully) are from late Wittgenstein, long after he stopped talking about tautologies. The tautology and truth-table stuff is from his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His philosophy underwent a very dramatic change between those periods.
What makes up the “core family”, the biological mother who abandons her child, or the adopted parents who take in the child and raise them as their own? Where is the core biological family in this situation?
Do you honestly believe that heterosexual reproduction will be reduced because we allow same sex marriage? How is this going to happen? I am interested in hearing your rationale.
So, families created this way are artificial and marginal? What about families with adopted children. By your rationale they must be even more artificial and marginal given that the children do not have DNA from either of their adopted parents.
I must say, your logic escapes me.
Very good point. Joseph definitely did not contribute any DNA to Jesus, if we are to believe the story, and I am not sure what the consensus is on Mary. By Erik’s logic, this would make this artificial (probably no argument here) and marginal. I wonder what the Pope would think about Jesus being marginal.
Well, since there are several people arguing against your point, it obviously is not self-evident. But you are correct, your point, erroneous as it is, is definitely trivial.
It doesn’t matter. Jesus did not reproduce further and Mary remained a virgin, so whatever she may have contributed ended up in a blind alley. That makes the whole lot of them marginal (using Erik’s criteria).
No,
Because that’s not how the term “bigot” is defined. You know that, or if your English-isn’t-first-language skills have let you down, you should remedy your ignorance before you say more.
Go ahead, if you need a moment to look up “bigot” in an English dictionary, we can wait.
For a person whose entire arguments — as dumb as they are — depend entirely on claims about definitions — you sure are dreadfully sloppy with this dictionary-definition thing.
Or, as some sects and some conspiracists tell the story, Mary did have other child(ren) but they bear the same relationship to Jesus that the children of any gay family do to a child of only one parent in the marriage: they’re at best half-siblings.
Which, according to Erik, don’t count as the “core family” when they’re the children of a now-out gay parent — who conceived them while in a mistaken or pressured-by-society marriage to a straight spouse. Doesn’t count, even though those children — now with two gay parents in a now-legal marriage and with the acceptance of society to help make the children’s lives stable and productive — are immeasurably better than they would have been, with their inherently gay parent locked for life into a sham marriage with that straight partner merely for “the sake of the children”.
I don’t get it. So tell me again why should we listen to a word from any christian about “core” marriage and family when their entire worldview is formed by the example of a half-human bastard (born i”in wedlock” only by the convenient fiction of Mary’s unconsummated marriage to Joseph, known not to be the child’s father) who told us to renounce family and had no family of his own?
From Merriam-Webster:
It seems to me that most people here are indeed bigots.
I think that the act of asserting that christians hate or are intolerant of gays just because they disagree with legalizing same-sex marriage is itself a case of bigotry. Reducing everything to a campaign of assigning the terms “hate” or “bigot” or “intolerance” for that which you disagree with is a sword that cuts both ways.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see that this can possibly be correct.
Firstly, at no point here has “marriage” been re-defined. The facts are these: several states passed laws making explicit that marriage was only recognized as holding between a man and a woman. The Supreme Court ruled that those laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion in Obergefell vs. Hodges did not contain any attempt to define or re-define marriage.
Secondly, the decision by the federal government to permit same-sex marriages does not change the meaning of marriage, or the meaning of gender, or the meaning of masculinity or femininity, or the meaning of sexual desire. (“No meanings were harmed in the making of this decision”.) What changed are not meanings — whatever those are — but rather social facts, facts about the social convention.
It is used to be a social fact that, in the United States, two people of the same gender who enjoyed the goods of sexual and erotic intimacy and wanted to commit to a life of shared projects could not benefit from the legal protections of marriage. That social fact is no longer the case; the meaning of marriage is not changed thereby.
What has changed in the meaning of marriage, and I think for the better, is that we no. longer think of marriage as the transfer of property — the woman — from father to husband. Instead we increasingly think of marriage as a relation between equals. As signs of this shift, marital rape is now considered a crime, whereas in previous generations it was considered a husband’s prerogative. (It was not until 1993 that marital rape was a crime in all 50 states, and even today it is not prosecuted the same as non-marital rape in all of the states.) In the 1990s, housework was not evenly distributed between men and women, leading the sociologist Arlie Hochschild to write The Second Shift. Love and commitment have become quite central to the 21st-century implicit understanding of marriage, thanks to second-wave and third-wave feminism, the sexual revolution, and other social and political factors.
I should say at once that not all of the social and political factors at work are positive. For one thing, women are entering the work force in large part because of the decline of skilled and semi-skilled blue collar labor, which is traditionally a male-dominated sector of the economy. Manufacturing in the US has been devastated by free trade agreements and by the 2008 economic meltdown. Some sociologists have argued that marriage rates are down among the working poor because the women have jobs, the men don’t, and women don’t want to marry a man who doesn’t have a job. Going back to school and re-training for a degree was a fine option until student debt spiraled out of control (due, in my view, to a rise in tuition caused by a perfect storm of decline in federal and state funding and massive bloat in administrations).
Be that as it may — although the implicit understanding of the social meaning of marriage has changed over the 20th century, the decision by SCOTUS is better thought of as acknowledging that the change has occurred than instituting a new conception of marriage altogether.
If someone maintains that members of a social group are not entitled to rights enjoyed by everyone who is not a member of that group, then that person is a bigot towards members of that group. I know it’s not “polite” to say so, but it is nevertheless true.
The only remaining question is whether the liberty to marry someone you love and who loves you is a right — that is, a civil right. If marriage is a civil right, then the Christian* who is opposed to same-sex marriage has no argument at all.
But it is nevertheless true that one can be bigoted towards a social group without actively hating anyone, or without even giving it much thought at all. I don’t know if there’s much data on implicit bias about sexual orientation, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it plays a big role.
* or whomever — it’s not just Christians who oppose same-sex marriage, and same-sex marriage is not opposed by all Christians.
Erik,
So you finally, albeit tangentially, address the question I posed several times. A gay married couple with two children via a surrogate mother does not meet the criteria for an ErikFamily(tm).
I must ask though, why not? These men both reproduced. They are raising their children in a committed, loving relationship. It seems that the sole defining characteristic of ErikMarriage(tm) is the gender of the people in the pair bond. Everything else is sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Erik,
Society doesn’t exist. Individuals do. Granting legal recognition to same sex couples affects only those couples. Your reaction to that legal recognition, no matter how visceral, is due to your personal views. Take responsibility for yourself.
It’s bizarre that they react to having their bigotry pointed out by coming up with the irrational rejoinder “nyah nyah you’re a bigot too!”
Not really bizarre. It’s the same as creationists saying “science is a religion” and “evolution is a religion” and “atheism is a religion.” It is a type of response that we have come to expect.
Well, I think that’s not exactly true. It can “affect” other couples, for example, by spreading a message that one doesn’t have to settle for a grim heterosexual marriage (or else lifelong loneliness) just to conform to social demands and privileges when one could have a loving and committed same-sex marriage instead, while (I think) this analogizes to other demands for conformity: eg you don’t have to settle for marrying the boy/girl your parents have picked out as a suitable partner, you can have the expectation to marry who you choose for love; you don’t have to settle for marriage at all …
But where Erik goes wrong is his continued equivocation on the word “affects”. He wants us to accept that changing the word marriage “affects” everyone, 100%, everybody either male or female. Well, okay, so what! Sure, I can accept that changing word definitions “affects” people; I see it happens all the time with all kinds of words (how about the word bitch which Gregory used yesterday: it used to mean only a mother dog and now it means any human woman whom the male speaker doesn’t like). But again, so what! Why would Erik spend weeks ranting against a change in the word marriage if he assumes it “affects” in a positive or at worst neutral way? OF course he believes it’s in a negative way, or he would have literally zero motivation to rant against it and 100% motivation to join in the celebration of this specific change for loving couples.
Which means that the actual sentence should read
[my addition to clarify Erik’s equivocation]
The real problem with Erik’s prejudice is not whether he’s factually correct that it “affects” everybody, it’s whether he’s factually correct that it affects everybody in the ways he’s invented to terrify people (including himself) with.
Oh my god it’s the end of society as we know it! Oh my god humanity will die out! Oh my god the gays are coming to steal my children! Oh my god they’re going to force me to divorce my heterosexual spouse! Oh my god they’re going to force me to get gay-married now!
Whatever, Erik, chill out.
Okay, not bizarre 🙂
But dumb and self-refuting of them.
I find this discussion interesting for an unexpected reason.
The “greater good” rationale is being shot down in favor of personal liberty.
Just an observation.
Don’t forget the wicked sad issue {sniff} that fifthmalarkey pointed out but nobody seems to care about except him and me: you can’t be friends anymore without having sex. I actually had to sleep with 7 people just this weekend to keep our relationships alive. {blub}
🙁
petrushka,
You think so? I see the SCOTUS decision as advancing both personal liberty and the greater good. A majority of Americans support gay marriage, after all.
To recall, my point was “Marriage is a legal concept about men and women. Therefore, when marriage is redefined, men and women are (legally) affected.” It’s a general point. In response, you retreat to America-centricity and you do nothing to address my point. So, sorry, you typed so much but said nothing of relevance.
Moreover, your tirade is both self-contradictory and contradictory to facts. You say that at no point has marriage been re-defined – in the end you say it’s not even defined (by the Supreme Court), while in the beginning you say “several states passed laws making explicit that marriage was only recognized as holding between a man and a woman” i.e. several states defined it. And throughout, on a number of occasions, you say that the meaning of marriage changed, i.e. it’s been re-defined.
So, let’s suppose marriage has not been re-defined. Whence such celebration of victory then among you? And sense of loss by others? Let’s suppose marriage has not been defined. Then you cannot even in principle address my points about definition, yet you seem to have much to say about them. You can only sensibly respond if you have a definition of marriage at hand or, if not, then mine is the only one and we have to use it, because there’s none other available.
Moreover, if marriage has not been defined in laws, then how come it appears in laws and there are court decisions about it? How did it get into laws? It must be that it got into laws from reality outside of laws, i.e. by these signs, marriage is a real thing. This refutes those who try to say that marriage is a pure legal construct and is defined as whatever the laws currently say about it.
The others here are far advanced into “whatever goes” mentality. Lizzie said, “I guess, by Erik’s use of the term “family”, Jesus’s family was only a “so-called” family.” Is immaculate conception a perfectly normal family for Lizzie? Not for the scriptures anyway. It was out of regular order in earthly terms (Joseph thought of dumping Mary) and highly extraordinary in heavenly terms (angels dancing around the situation, telling the couple what to do). So, certainly not your average statistically representative family.
Let’s stick to more general philosophy, KN. You are somewhat better at that. Any thoughts on these posts?
Yeah, even a majority of theists in their various denominations.
I don’t see anyone here at TSZ advocating that “personal liberty” really would trump the “greater good” if gay marriage doesn’t advance both. I mean, it’s not like anyone was arguing last week with Erik’s (silly) example of cars and pedestrians to say that “personal liberty” means I have the liberty to walk wherever I please, and to hell with the “greater good” of orderly traffic and mostly-trauma-free driving. We’re not dumb enough to be blindly in favor of liberty above all.
People like Erik are making an argument (or at least, trying to imply one) about gay-marriage being against the greater good. We’re refuting him not on the validity of the concept of “greater good”, but on the content of his irrational belief about what’s in the greater good.
We may argue where the dividing line falls, between personal liberty and greater good, when we perceive a conflict between the two ideals on some tough moral question, but I don’t see that one “is being shot down in favor” of the other.
And in this case, it’s really a no-brainer. Marriage equality is for the greater good and for personal liberty. NIce when it works out so smoothly.
What’s this? Another Christian who doesn’t know what “immaculate” means?
Huh, that’s easy.
Ingrained bigotry, stupidity, and religious delusion.
Stirring right wing propaganda.
Political intent to steal elections by stirring up a small-but-determined group of special-interest (anti-gay) voters.
Criminal intent to defraud money from less-rational people by crying on TV about the “gay-marriage disaster” and funds needed to “fight against it”.
No one would feel a “sense of loss” about marriage equality if they were accurately and without bias looking at the real world of real human beings. Heterosexual couples are losing absolutely nothing in the real world while homosexual couples (and importantly, the children they have already conceived/given birth to or are planning to conceive and/or adopt) are gaining legal stability and dignity under the law. Equality which was always guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, but which was sadly not always recognized previously, is now happily recognized and affirmed by the court in accordance with the Constitutional premises upon which the entire nation was founded,
All gain, no pain, except in the sadly-deluded imaginings of certain fools. Feeling sorry for their so-called “sense of loss” is no more a moral guide for how we should behave as a society than feeling sorry for anti-vaxxers is. If you’re a bleeding heart, feel free to expend the rest of your life wiping away their salty tears. But don’t expect any rational person to believe that just because some fool is crying, that means they have actually lost anything in the real world.
“Ingrained bigotry, stupidity, and religious delusion.”
Lizzie’s definition of ‘good faith’?
Honestly, I wonder if any of ’em know what their own religion means. Well, strictly speaking “immaculate conception” is only dogma for the Catholics, and probably Erik isn’t Catholic. But you’d still think he would make the effort to be sure he knew what he was talking about before he tried to slam Lizzie with something religious.
Pew survey in 2010 found that (in America) atheists and agnostics significantly out-score the average christian on questions about christianity and the bible. (Ha ha, Mormons score better, but it’s funny because some christians are reluctant to acknowledge Mormons as “true christians”.) When you add in the questions about other world religions and religious leaders, atheists outscore everybody.
An excerpted quiz from the full survey is still available to test yourself here if you’d like.
hotshoe_,
You answered 15 of 15 questions correctly (100%)
…
You scored better than 99% of the public, below 0% and the same as 1%.
And, by golly, the questions struck me as childishly easy.
Most non-catholics get that one wrong.
DId I call you a bigot, Gregory?
Did I call you stupid, Gregory?
DId I call you religiously deluded, Gregory?
If so, do feel free to link to those comments.
I would certainly accept those comments being moved to guano if they do indeed exist and do indeed break the rules of assuming that YOU are posting in good faith.
If you can’t/won’t provide evidence that I directly called you out, Gregory, I suggest you might choose to apologize for implying that I am not posting in “good faith”.
When I respond to Erik’s irrational demand that we take other (non-TSZ, non-named, and likely non-existent) persons’ tears seriously, as if their (imaginary) crying is proof that they’ve been harmed by “marriage re-definition”, I am posting in perfect good faith to point out how ridiculous that is.
Yep, and as far as I can tell, Erik isn’t Catholic. But like I said, when he’s using it to try to slam you (for what he claims are your bad beliefs about family) you would figure he would want to make the effort to be sure he’s accurate.
Well, not everybody can be as smart as Piotr and me. 🙂
15 out of 15, fine score!
I also scored 15 of 15, but I was wildly guessing with the questions about U.S. school system and with the last question. And a few questions were open to interpretation. For example with John Smith, I stopped to think was he a Mormon or was he the founder of Mormonism. I got them right by sheer chance.
As to your question about my knowledge of immaculate conception, I have no idea what you are asking. I thought I was saying whatever is commonly said about what God did to Mary. English is not my language and Christianity is not my religion, so sorry if I got something wrong about either of them.
You haven’t showed though if my choice of the term changed my point.
Erik,
– terms don’t get their meaning from definitions; definitions make explicit the meaning that a term implicitly already has. (This is why it’s a bad idea to start philosophy by defining your terms; the definitions only tell you the understanding that you already have.)
– anything complicated enough to be interesting — marriage being but one example — can undergo shifts in attitudes, expectations, emotions, connotations, symbolism, etc. without being re-defined. Has marriage been redefined as a result of feminism? To some extent our implicit culturally-embedded assumptions and expectations about marriage have shifted as a result of feminism. Whether that shift amounts to a re-definition seems like a red herring.
– I’m only interested in talking about the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell vs. Hodges, because that’s a nice concrete case we can meaningfully discuss. I’m not sure what the point would be about talking about marriage in some abstract, generic sense because I’m not too sure there is such a sense.
Well, I’m glad to see that Mung’s OP wasn’t a poorly veiled attempt to criticize SSM n
Did I say terms get their meaning from definitions? Care to quote me on this?
And why is it a bad idea to clarify the terms to oneself and to the discussion partner? Is it a vastly better idea to leave them open to interpretation, debatable, vague and confusing?
Ah, this answers my second paragraph. You won’t go anywhere near clarity. You hate it intensely. I have seen it before with pragmatists. Quite unfortunate.
Nope. It’s a very very bad case for several concrete clear obvious reasons.
1. Too recent. There are far better settled-down cases to look at. Looking at anything comparatively is a good methodical approach anyway.
2. American (You are an American, I am not, so you have a clear advantage. But this must be the way you like it.)
3. You said it doesn’t even define marriage, i.e. it doesn’t even get us started. Thus end of discussion.
I recently read that pragmatists are supposed to be the anti-sceptics.
That’s the only sense in which Erik has half-a-chance of making an argument, because the moment he (or anyone) looks at the actual human beings involved in the actual case, it’s totally obvious that the court’s decision is right: injustices against gay couples have been corrected, and absolutely zero straight couples have been harmed in the process.
Lately I’ve been wondering how anyone could be hard-hearted enough to not wish justice for Obergefell. Do people simply not know what his case was about?
James Obergefell and John Arthur legally married in the state of Maryland. The state of Ohio had a ban on same-sex marriage, and due to the legal chaos of DOMA at that time, the US federal government could not require the state to recognize gay marriages performed in other states, although the federal government has long required every state to recognize any opposite-sex marriages made in other states (even where the other state has different requirements, say, minimum age limits); if you were married in one, you were married in all 50 states, as long as you’re straight.
When they returned to Ohio, Arthur was dying of ALS. In advance of Arthur’s death, they filed suit to ensure that Obergefell’s name would be on Arthur’s death certificate as “surviving spouse”. The state Attorney General planned to defend Ohio’s gay marriage ban and continue the policy of refusing to recognize legitimate marriages from other states. Arthur died. The state filed a motion that the case was then moot. Not too surprisingly, the court refused to dismiss, because the relief Obergefell sought (his name as spouse on his husband’s death certificate) was still relevant.
Now, you or I might wonder why it mattered so much to James Obergefell to be listed as spouse on the paperwork after the fact, but we have to wonder even more why a hard-hearted person would say that James Obergefell did NOT deserve equal rights and dignity in recognition of his marriage to his beloved man and their commitment which did indeed last until death parted them. Even the most hard-hearted should be touched, thrilled, that Arthur was finally granted his dying wish.
How can anyone continue to go on and on about some generic sense of marriage, or the generic one-man-one-woman-maybe-more-than-one-kid family, without ever looking at the specific persons whose lives really are better because of this Supreme Court ruling? All gain, no pain in the real world.
Well, that’s certainly consistent with your anti-essentialism, but not very pragmatic.
You reject universals? Don’t believe it’s possible to reason from particulars to the abstract? Or that having reasoned from particulars to the abstract it’s not possible to do anything meaningful given the abstraction?
Philosopher walks into a cat rescue operation: I’d like a cat please.
Attendant; Any particular cat?
Philosopher: Cat’s come in particulars?
Attendant: Absolutely. Those are the best kind of cat! The kind you can actually take home with you.
Philosopher: Well, I am allergic to cat hair. So just a cat please.
petrushka: A majority of Americans support gay marriage, after all.
hotshoe_: Yeah, even a majority of theists in their various denominations.
“If democracy means nothing more than giving the majority of the people what they want, then it is practically indistinguishable from fascism.”
– Marc Raeff (Historian)