Gabriella,
Of course. This is a message board where people are free to exchange opinions within the rules. There is no rule stopping posters from labelling any post racist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic etc etc so you go ahead. It happens in real life too - people try to discuss something and someone somewhere starts labelling them phobic or racist or some such thing while other people disagree with the label. The labels are so overused they’ve become meaningless a lot of the time.
That flat surface in front of you supported by four legs that has a cup of tea on it: do you “label” it “table”? You’re trying to imply that “labelling” is the problem, but sometime the labels – ie, the descriptions – are appropriate. Here for example if someone wants arbitrarily to assert marriages that can’t produce children to be “not on a par” with those that can, but then relates that to gay marriage but not to other types of non-procreational marriages then he’s pretty much providing a textbook example of homophobia: he’s selected one criterion for parity (albeit spuriously) and then applied it just to one sub-set of the various groups within that category.
Glad we’ve got onto a discussion about the arbitrary social construct called marriage. It can be arbitrarily defined any way society chooses to define it. Currently there is an arbitrary rule that it should only be between 2 people. In the future this arbitrary rule may change. I personally do not think it Islamophobic that legally marriage in Britain is restricted to only 2 leaving a small minority of Muslim wives who are in a polygynous marriage unprotected by legal matrimonial rights. I also do not think it Islamophobic to say polygyny is morally wrong or to discuss possible reasons why someone would consider it morally wrong. It’s a religion and ethics board so it would be kind of boring if these things cannot be discussed openly. But that’s just the way I choose to use this forum. If someone else wants to start playing the race card or the Islamophobic card in response to discussions that’s up to them.
No-one has, and you’ve missed the point again. Discussion about which types of marriages are “on a par” with other types is one thing; having decided that though, selecting just one-sub-set that (supposedly) fails that test is discriminatory. If you want to decide that non-procreational marriages are not on a par with procreational ones, the former must include not only gay marriages but marriages of infertile couples, of pensioners, of people who choose not to have children etc.
Yes when it comes to civil marriage. Though I suppose it depends on what you mean by “suggesting”. I am repeating points made by people in society as arbitrary social constructs make for an interesting discussion - if that is what you mean by saying I am suggesting it, then yes, I am suggesting it and being called ....Xxxxxxphobic (fill in the blank) is a small price to pay to continue a discussion. If you meant that I support a particular definition of marriage then I personally don’t care how civil marriage is defined - I think it’s up to elected MPs, lobby / pressure groups (well-funded or otherwise), voters and other stakeholders in society to make those decisions in a democracy - whether it’s about same sex or polygamous marriages.
No – again, I describe something as homophobic when it is homophobic for the same reason I describe racism as racist, ageism as ageist etc. And if you don’t care about how civil marriage is defined, why do you care about how traditional marriage is defined?
You have fun with that.
I already have. It’s shame you won’t engage with it though.
No. If I wanted to name specific posters, I would have.
Still missing it. If you want to claim “hysterical” behaviour then to justify the claim you need to provide examples of it (named or otherwise). I haven’t seen it here, and I suspect you haven’t either but you thought it was a useful straw man. It isn’t.
See above
Ditto.
I didn’t. As I pointed out, the feedback is interpreted by different brains differently, depending on the individual brain’s nature / nurture. So my point was that the information derived from reasoning is not the same for everyone, hence different people will take that reasoning and arrive at different conclusions due to subjective perceptions, filters and understanding.
You’ve shifted ground now, but in any case yes of course people interpret things differently but any field of communication – social, scientific, philosophical, whatever – requires commonality of understanding it it’s to function at all. For example you’ve had explained why the example “non-procreational marriage is not on a par with procreational marriage, but I’ll apply that test only to gay couples” is homophobic. You may be “interpreting” that differently but I have no idea why unless it's to avoid engaging with the argument, preferring instead endless evasions and diversions.
Firstly, I disagree with the generalised idea of a continuum that legitimises the next layer. Sometimes these people may feel legitimised but sometimes they don’t- so I don’t think it’s a given.
That’s a
non sequitur. No one said “it always happens”, but your concession to “sometimes” should bother you a lot more than it appears to I’d suggest. How many gay men being beaten up because of societal homophobia is ok would you say?
I think many people who engage in criminal violence will find a way to do that regardless of the reason, if they sense weakness and have an opportunity where they have power over someone- whether that is by being in the Armed Forces serving in a foreign war or being in a gang or at a football match. I am not suggesting that people cannot be engaged in discussions about their various moral outlooks and if it helps you feel better to label them (something)phobic or racist, be my guest. But as I am fairly liberal when it comes to free speech I can tolerate hearing uncomfortable views and I can tolerate people calling other people (something)phobic.
I’m very liberal when it comes to free speech, but free speech does not imply that people can express their various “isms” without being challenged on them. That’s not a denial of free speech – it’s the epitome of it.
I think you’re being deliberately evasive. The point I was making was about the public institution of marriage. If you want to discuss people having sex, you’ll have to find someone else to discuss it with - maybe someone who watches porn. Trying to picture other people having sex just seems weird regardless of the sex, genders, numbers involved. It’s as weird as trying to think about my parents having sex. I feel like I am intruding on people’s privacy.
Where the hell did that come from? As you’ve just ducked it again, I’ll give it one more try:
1. For you to “tolerate” something there needs to be something to be tolerated.
2. When something doesn’t negatively affect you, your immediate circle, your society etc then it’s not tolerance-
apt. It’s just irrelevant to you except in an abstract sense, so it’s misplaced and presumptuous to decide that you do or don’t tolerate it nonetheless.
3. As somewhere less than 2% of the population identify as gay and assuming that, say, half want to get married that’s around 1% of the population. Assuming they all did, you would go about your business as entirely unaffected by the fact of those equal marriages as you are by the fact of, say marriages between pensioners. What on earth then do you think it is that you’ve being expected to “tolerate” when it has nothing at all to do with you?
