Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Random tweet-length thought of the day

Why is it that when a Muslim kills 8 people it's the Democrats' fault for supporting diversity visas, but when a white man kills 59 people it's not the Republicans' fault for opposing gun control?

17 comments:

Publius said...

Bearing arms is a right.

Immigration is a privilege

Ron said...

A distinction without a difference in this case. We The People ultimately decide what are rights and what are privileges. The only difference between a right and a privilege is the number of votes required to take it away.

Publius said...

>The only difference between a right and a privilege is the number of votes required to take it away.


The difference between a right and a privilege is that if you try to take a right away, you spark a civil war.

Ron said...

> if you try to take a right away, you spark a civil war.

You conservatives are awfully selective about which rights you hold dear. You seem to have no qualms about taking away a woman's right to reproductive freedom, or a gay person's right to marry whom they choose.

Publius said...

@Ron
> taking away a woman's right to reproductive freedom

Oh, you mean your euphemism for a woman murdering her child?
Yeah, we want to take that "right" away from her.

>a gay person's right to marry whom they choose.

Homosexuals can't get "married" because "marriage" is an institution between a man and a woman (and also a sacriment). Similar to how you can't redefine "blue" to be "yellow."

Homosexuals could enter into civil unions, which have exactly the same privileges and responsibilities of marriage, but is called a "civil union" instead.

Even better, get government out of marriage. Everyone gets a civil union from the government.
Couples get married somewhere else (say, church).

Ron said...

> Oh, you mean your euphemism for a woman murdering her child?

An embryo is not a child.

> Homosexuals can't get "married" because "marriage" is an institution between a man and a woman (and also a sacriment).

That will be news to the hundreds of thousands of married gay couples around the world.

> Even better, get government out of marriage. Everyone gets a civil union from the government.

Even better that that: just pretend that the word "marriage" means "civil union" in the context of anything the government does. That would achieve the exact same result without the expensive and painful legal battle it would take to actually change the law.

Honestly, why do you conservatives get so hung up over terminology?

Publius said...


>Even better that that: just pretend that the word "marriage" means "civil union" in the context of anything the government does.

Pretend? That's useful for public policy.

It's also useful everywhere. Why don't you pretend that God exists?

Ron said...


> Why don't you pretend that God exists?

Pretending that God exists involves more than just redefining a term. Changing "marriage" to "civil union" is *just* a matter of redefining a term because, in your own words, civil unions "have exactly the same privileges and responsibilities of marriage." They are, by your own definition, the exact same thing called by a different name.

Seriously: what difference does it make if it's called "marriage" or "civil union"?

Publius said...


>Changing "marriage" to "civil union" is *just* a matter of redefining a term because, in your own words, civil unions "have exactly the same privileges and responsibilities of marriage." They are, by your own definition, the exact same thing called by a different name.

In the context of governmnent provided privileges and government enforced responsibilities.
Other contexts are social and religious.

>Seriously: what difference does it make if it's called "marriage" or "civil union"?

Marriage is a union between a man and a woman, by which they make their relationship public, official, and permanent. It is also a sacriment, an intimite community of life and love which has been established by God.

Ron said...

> Marriage is a union between a man and a woman

You can keep saying that until you're blue in the face, but you will still not have answered my question.

There are many English words with multiple meanings. Why not just stipulate that when you use the word "marriage" in a church it means something different than when you say it in a civil context? How does that not solve the problem?

You've already conceded that using a *different* word ("civil union") would solve the problem. Why not just let one word do double-duty, as so many other English words already do?

Publius said...

@Ron
>Why not just let one word do double-duty, as so many other English words already do?

Consider: why did advocates for legally recognized homosexual unions want to use the word "marriage"?

I would assert they wanted to use "marriage" as they wish to take the meaning and attributes of marriage, its social context, and its history, and have those associated with their homosexual unions. Instead of building meaning, attributes, and history for a new "civil union," and how it might differ from marriage, they prefer to simply purloin those from "marriage" so that all that is positive with "marriage" is instantly associated with their unions. [I doubt they want the negatives with "marriage"].

You shouldn't support it, either. Such tactics are weapons of meme mass destruction. The meme of marriage has been damaged. Old books discussing marriage are losing their meaning as the meme of marriage is diffused and dispersed.

Ron said...

> they wanted to use "marriage" as they wish to take the meaning and attributes of marriage, its social context, and its history, and have those associated with their homosexual unions

Well, yeah, I'm sure that was part of it. But it is also to take advantage of the many tangible benefits of marriage written into the law.

> they prefer to simply purloin those from "marriage" so that all that is positive with "marriage" is instantly associated with their unions

That's right. Just like Mildred and Richard Loving did. I still don't see the problem.

> The meme of marriage has been damaged.

Not all mutations are harmful. And if this mutation lets gay people live with less stress so that they can spend more of their mental energy making art and doing science and raising children then how on earth could anyone oppose it for any reason other than bigotry?

Apparently some conservatives have not gotten the memo: "separate but equal" doesn't fly any more.

Publius said...

NOT EQUAL

@Ron
>. . . Just like Mildred and Richard Loving . . .
>Apparently some conservatives have not gotten the memo: "separate but equal" doesn't fly any more.


Your analogy is not analogous, as Mildred was a woman and Richard a man.

Your attempt to tie the issue to racial "separate but equal" does not apply, as homosexual marriage is NOT EQUAL to heterosexual marriage.

Let's look at the math:

man + man != man + woman
woman + woman != man + woman

Q.E.D., homosexual unions are NOT EQUAL to heterosexual unions.
They're DIFFERENT.
They are NOT THE SAME.

Just like a chair is not a tree, nor a sparrow a shark, we should not call homosexual unions the same name as heterosexual unions.

Ron said...

@Publus:

I can do pseudo-math too:

Black + White != White + White != Black + Black

QED interracial unions are not equal to same-race unions. They're DIFFERENT. They are NOT THE SAME.

So what?

Publius said...

While I haven't checked them all, I think your comment is probably the shallowist one ever posted on Rondam Ramblings.

Your analogy is not analogous and you know it. The sex of the people is directly relevant to the issue. Other attributes of the people (skin color, eye color, hair color, size of their feet, number of moles on their backs) are not relevant.

Ron said...

> Your analogy is not analogous and you know it.

I know no such thing.

> The sex of the people is directly relevant to the issue.

Why?

Publius said...

. . . and it gets worse.