Its a horrible design to wedge some religious worship stuff into government regulation. Its just inherently a bad idea.
Consider an alternate world where some cosmic ray bounced the other direction, leading to the government hyper-regulating all of your points but WRT the Catholic sacrament of God Parents for a Baptism, that would be F-ed up and the solution would be to un-F the government relationship, not to merely "permit" a bunch of new legal exceptions for the Methodists god parents and permit, uh, something for the synagogue and so forth. "Well, if you FEEL like you're Catholic God Parents, even if you're not Catholics nor believe in God nor are parents, then you can get the vast privileges and permissions granted to Catholic God Parents as listed in your post above". Its all a bunch of nonsense at a high level.
Doing something dumb is inherently bad in and of itself; slapping a band aid of "OK now you two guys are cool too" is not a serious fix to the problem, regardless how happy/relieved any individual two guys may justifiably be
The other way to attack it, which is pretty valid, is government exists to perpetuate society which must include reproduction. Hence we have things like free public schools, admittedly worth every penny the parents pay, but its the thought that counts. So there's a legit reproductive argument for a childbearing or theoretically childbearing couple who could be realistic role models getting all kinds of "reproductive privileges" that two close friends who like the feeling of gay sex don't earn by virtue of perpetuating society. From a large scale "survival of civilization" the gays tapped out and are not participating and are genetic dead ends. I can see the individual argument that the purpose of the government's laws is tranquilizing individuals, in which case making gay folks happy is useful as a distraction while ruling over them. Its kind of like the miscegenation vs multiculturalism thing, you can only be logically consistent by excluding one or the other, both together does not work, by definition.
An interesting and highly relevant thought experiment would be imagine gay folk invented and perpetuated something of the level of complexity of marriage; would it be appropriate for the Supreme Court to demand equal access for straight people to that theoretical gay construct? Should every gay bathhouse in the country be forced legally at gunpoint to implement "Saturday Straight Day" merely because some straight folk want equal access to something the gays built by themselves and the straights finally badgered the Supreme Court into agreeing that big brother must force the gay bathhouse people to accept straights?
An interesting and highly relevant thought experiment would be imagine gay folk invented and perpetuated something of the level of complexity of marriage; would it be appropriate for the Supreme Court to demand equal access for straight people to that theoretical gay construct?
Yes, of course.
Should every gay bathhouse in the country be forced legally at gunpoint to implement "Saturday Straight Day" merely because some straight folk want equal access to something the gays built by themselves and the straights finally badgered the Supreme Court into agreeing that big brother must force the gay bathhouse people to accept straights?
My understanding is that (1) gay bathhouses largely went away decades ago due to AIDS, and (2) they never kicked people out for being straight - among other things, you can't tell who's straight and who's gay by looking. As far as gay bars go, if you're a straight person who wanders in looking for a couple of drinks, you might get hit on a bit by someone who you don't want to get hit on, but your money is still green and nobody will complain or even know you're straight unless you start a fight or something.
As far as the rest of your point, I'd be totally fine with some other way of legally recognizing close relationships between adults completely absent of any religious baggage, especially when there's actually stakes involved (inheritance, insurance, medical decisions, etc). As an interesting example of a probably non-sexual version of this, after her husband died my grandmother lived with a female friend of hers for over 20 years, and while to the best of my knowledge they were never lovers they were certainly effectively a family after living together for that long, and were largely treated as such.
-- The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:24PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:24PM (#717356)
if you're a straight person who wanders in looking for a couple of drinks, you might get hit on a bit by someone who you don't want to get hit on, but your money is still green and nobody will complain or even know you're straight unless you start a fight or something./blockquote
Exactly this happened to me, except for the getting hit on part. Wasn't even obvious at first that it was a gay bar. Enjoyed my drinks at the bar and left.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)
Its a horrible design to wedge some religious worship stuff into government regulation. Its just inherently a bad idea.
Consider an alternate world where some cosmic ray bounced the other direction, leading to the government hyper-regulating all of your points but WRT the Catholic sacrament of God Parents for a Baptism, that would be F-ed up and the solution would be to un-F the government relationship, not to merely "permit" a bunch of new legal exceptions for the Methodists god parents and permit, uh, something for the synagogue and so forth. "Well, if you FEEL like you're Catholic God Parents, even if you're not Catholics nor believe in God nor are parents, then you can get the vast privileges and permissions granted to Catholic God Parents as listed in your post above". Its all a bunch of nonsense at a high level.
Doing something dumb is inherently bad in and of itself; slapping a band aid of "OK now you two guys are cool too" is not a serious fix to the problem, regardless how happy/relieved any individual two guys may justifiably be
The other way to attack it, which is pretty valid, is government exists to perpetuate society which must include reproduction. Hence we have things like free public schools, admittedly worth every penny the parents pay, but its the thought that counts. So there's a legit reproductive argument for a childbearing or theoretically childbearing couple who could be realistic role models getting all kinds of "reproductive privileges" that two close friends who like the feeling of gay sex don't earn by virtue of perpetuating society. From a large scale "survival of civilization" the gays tapped out and are not participating and are genetic dead ends. I can see the individual argument that the purpose of the government's laws is tranquilizing individuals, in which case making gay folks happy is useful as a distraction while ruling over them. Its kind of like the miscegenation vs multiculturalism thing, you can only be logically consistent by excluding one or the other, both together does not work, by definition.
An interesting and highly relevant thought experiment would be imagine gay folk invented and perpetuated something of the level of complexity of marriage; would it be appropriate for the Supreme Court to demand equal access for straight people to that theoretical gay construct? Should every gay bathhouse in the country be forced legally at gunpoint to implement "Saturday Straight Day" merely because some straight folk want equal access to something the gays built by themselves and the straights finally badgered the Supreme Court into agreeing that big brother must force the gay bathhouse people to accept straights?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @08:31PM (1 child)
Yes, of course.
My understanding is that (1) gay bathhouses largely went away decades ago due to AIDS, and (2) they never kicked people out for being straight - among other things, you can't tell who's straight and who's gay by looking. As far as gay bars go, if you're a straight person who wanders in looking for a couple of drinks, you might get hit on a bit by someone who you don't want to get hit on, but your money is still green and nobody will complain or even know you're straight unless you start a fight or something.
As far as the rest of your point, I'd be totally fine with some other way of legally recognizing close relationships between adults completely absent of any religious baggage, especially when there's actually stakes involved (inheritance, insurance, medical decisions, etc). As an interesting example of a probably non-sexual version of this, after her husband died my grandmother lived with a female friend of hers for over 20 years, and while to the best of my knowledge they were never lovers they were certainly effectively a family after living together for that long, and were largely treated as such.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:24PM