[extropy-chat] Gay marriage in Spain, a world of change

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jul 21, 2005, at 3:24 AM, Evan Hamlin wrote:

> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>> Laws do not make something normal they just strive to make things   
>> more just and balanced.
>>
>> No.  It says that these relationships are just as deep, just as  
>> real  and that people of same sex orientation have the same rights  
>> as  everyone else including the right to have their relationships  
>> as  recognized and respected.
>>
>
> In response to Samantha:
>
> I must respectfully disagree. Laws do not state anything about how  
> deep relationships are, or whether they are as meaningful or  
> anything like that. They may be interpreted as such, but that would  
> only be your interpretation fit into the mold of your personal  
> beliefs. What laws do is outline the goals of a society. Saying  
> that homosexuality occurs in X% of the world or has been around for  
> X thousand years is totally irrelevant. Murder has occured for  
> millions of years and continues to be carried out by a large  
> portion of the population, but is still made illegal. Why? Because  
> we want to discourage people from killing one another. We as a  
> society think this is undesirable behavior.
>

The goals of society.  I am sorry but we appear to be of different  
political species.  The legitimate function of government and law is  
to protect the rights of the people not to shape the people according  
to some "society".    You appear to be a socialist of some variety.


> Mike Lorrey was correct in his defense of my meaning. They all have  
> equal rights to marry whomever they wish of the same sex.  
> Additionally, they have the right to be with whomever they want,  
> male or female. What they don't have is the blessing of society and  
> the government, for whatever that is worth (apparently quite a bit,  
> mainly due to the social security benefits, although I am mainly  
> approaching this law as a societal symbol) to carry out a  
> relationship which may just as well be as deep as any of mine or  
> yours, but nonetheless goes against the grain of evolution.

I had no idea that society is somehow to determine and enforce "the  
grain of evolution" or what some person may consider to be such.

> One simple reason is that a society of purely homosexuals cannot  
> exist without the natural reproduction of heterosexuals (barring  
> test tube babies, but is that the kind of parentage we want future  
> generations of children to have?).
>

All of this has been shown to be irrelevant so many times now.  Lets  
change the music.  Get out of the way of my equal rights or be  
flattened.


>
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> If you think God exists and moreover this superintelligent creator  
> of the
> universe doesn't like gay marriage, you're religious.
>
> This is a mailing list for people who want to grow tails, sprout  
> wings, switch
> sexes, grow new sex organs, create new sexes, and upload themselves  
> into
> Jupiter Brains.  If you can't handle the concept of gay marriage,  
> then what
> the hell are you doing here?
>
> PS:  Let the record show that this is the person who chided me for  
> not being
> open-minded when I expressed dissatisfaction with David Stiger's  
> posting
> quality.  (Ad hominem tu qoque.)
>
> In response to Eliezer:
>
> I said that I am non-religious, which obviously implies a disbelief  
> in a higher being which approves or disproves anything. I simply  
> mentioned it for the sake of mentioning it for anyone who cared.  
> Religion was, used to, and *sometimes* still is an indicator of  
> societal norms, at least in the time when their texts were written.
>
> Moreover, I am totally up for growing tails, sprouting wings,  
> creating new sexes, and uploading my brain into who-knows-what. The  
> following is kind of hard to explain but I'll try. What I am saying  
> is that so long as our society has a set of laws which represent a  
> moral code of our society, for example making drugs illegal is a  
> moral law more than anything else, we should treat it as such.

i.e., as meaningless anti-freedom bullshit doing unnecessary harm to  
real people.   Laws cannot legislate morality.

- samantha