Quote from Facebook friend: Although marriage has now become something based on romantic love and friendship, compatibility, etc., a legal criterion for valid marriage is still penis-vagina sex (e.g. you can annul a marriage if it's not consummated). If we really followed what we think marriage is now (friend, lover, companion, possible parenting partner) then it wouldn't matter at all what the sex/gender of the couple is. Duh. Duh? There's two movements of logical sleight-of-hand going on for this kind of statement to appear coherent as an argument. 1. We = state. Talk of legal criterion has to do with the state, but the "we" here is in reference to society at large. The two are not really equal. Society has a different stake in marriages and the relationship they solemnify than does the state. The state's interest is to define its tax-paying and benefits-receiving units, and to identify its citizens, who all derive from familial roots. Society's in...
Candid evaluation of assumptions as well as musings on consequences of political, religious, moral, scientific, linguistic and literary truths and pretensions thereto. Dissecting representations, critiquing arguments, discussing liberty, equality, justice, faith, values, facts, and the principles and institutions that make them all possible.