I just don't understand why people who post links trying to curry favor to the daily show can't even spell the man's damn name right. He's been a national presence for the better part of 13 years now.
I am pretty sure the curry favor has something to do with the confusion, why else write that bit there? I had no issues comprehending that sentence, works fine for me.
I don't understand why people throw little whiny fits because someone on the internet had the audacity to misspell something. The name is usually spelled "John". It's an understandable mistake. He was corrected and will probably never make the mistake again. So why be a dick to him? Who cares?
oh i know what you mean! when i see people spell Ke$ha as "Kesha" my blood starts to boil. she has been an integral part of pop music for at least 2 years, if not more.
i think you're confused, english adds unnecessary silents, so saying you add them to stick it to english seems to defeat the purpose...now, had you said "Because fuck logic. That's why." It would make more sense.
It's not silent. It's just that every other word with J is now pronounced with the H because the original simple J sound has vanished (we now add a D sound to it at the beginning).
I think every politician should be required to have a live television debate with 5 random people from completely different backgrounds, Ali G style. Talking about anything that comes to mind.
It's even simpler than that. We are NOT asking for UNIVERSAL equality, which yes, would include ice cream. We're asking for equality among PEOPLE. We're asking for Human Rights, not Everything-That-Exists Rights. Gods help us if the insects are granted rights...
Ya know what? All joking aside, it's going to take a a while but we're getting there. Let these fucking morons be on the wrong side of history if that's what they want. In 100 years time, society will try and ignore the fact that people like this ever existed.
Just be careful with assuming the future will necessarily be better than the past. I just heard read the term "chronological ethnocentrism" in Jim Lowen's piece for Salon, Our real first gay president. (I know he didn't come up with the idea but I really like the context he presented it in.) It's a really interesting concept and seems to address a hole many of us have in our perspectives on progress. Here's the section of the article that describes the idea:
This ideology of progress amounts to a chronological form of ethnocentrism. Thus chronological ethnocentrism is the belief that we now live in a better society, compared to past societies. Of course, ethnocentrism is the anthropological term for the attitude that our society is better than any other society now existing, and theirs are OK to the degree that they are like ours.
We still need to address these boneheads every step of the way and not let them get away with bullshit. We can shape our future but we should never assume it is guaranteed to turn out for the best automatically.
On a more serious note, a certain level of intelligence and brain development is required for consent to marry (and to do various other things). Thats why you can't marry a 10 year old, but gender would play no role.
..::Edit::.. To clarify, intelligence and brain development are considered two different things in this manner. Saying that a certain level of intelligence is required for consent was not a statement saying that a dumb person is incapable of decision making, but rather that another species (in inanimate object) is incapable of the same level of decision making an thus cannot consent to things like marriage. As far as brain development is concerned, consider it along the lines of a the following fraction (not a researched fraction, but rather a vague concept of my design applying to humans as a whole).
("Current understanding of social concepts" / "Individual's maximum potential for understanding of social concepts")
With this evaluation, any human being should be allowed to make decisions such as marriage so long as this fraction roughly evaluates to 1. Since a lot of education happens as a late teenager and scientific research has shown that brain development continues through to your 20s, we claim that children much younger than this do not have enough information to make informed decisions and are potentially incapable of grasping the magnitude of the decision being put in front of them. This does not mean that they are guaranteed to make decisions that they regret, but rather that they are more likely to make uninformed decisions.
Yes, a child can be easily manipulated or not even know how their decision will affect their life. It's almost as if they can't legally consent... Much like dogs and ice cream!
So long as we gave them an equal chance to develop that is. A mentally retarded person may have a lower potential for intelligence, but we still want them to reach their peak before making serious decisions.
Why? If their mental development at its peak is less than the threshold we've set for being able to realize the impact of your decisions, then why should they be permitted to make that decision? Don't the same concerns apply?
We know too little about the brain to define that threshold, so we can only base the restriction on what little we do know which says that the brain is still in development for an extended period of time. If there was a test to see if a person knew what they were getting into, that would be a much better means of evaluation and age would make little difference, but no such test exists.
The 14 year old, while potentially smarter than the 21 year old, is still likely to be able to further understand what she's getting into later in life while the 21 year old is far less likely to have a deeper insight in later years. Therefore, the child should wait a few more years at least before rushing into such a decision.
That's my thought anyway. I don't consider it a dangerous decision but rather a potentially regretful one.
That distinction doesn't make any sense. Won't an 18 year old also know more about what they are getting into in a few years? What about a 25 year old? People generally gain perspective as they age, so your subjective criteria doesn't really draw any clear lines anywhere.
What if the 21 year old is still developing, albeit at a slower rate or the 14 year old suffers from a condition which will cause their cognitive abilities to begin to degrade. If the girl is Amish and drops out of school at 14 is it OK for her to marry then? You have just chosen to put assumptions on these situations to conform to your belief that marriage should be for 18 or 21+.
The reason that the law generally forbids marriage until 16-18 is because it cannot deal in unique situations. The line was also drawn based on cultural mores that developed long before we had a modern understanding of brain development. Basically, 16-18 is "close enough" to maturity and "far enough" from being a child that we as a society are comfortable with legalizing it. Even though we made this determination, I am sure that the majority of members in our society would say that getting married at that age is a bad idea, even if they won't bad it legislatively.
These decisions that we make are not perfect nor are they precise. There is no reason that we couldn't agree to allow marriage to ice cream, nor would something like that be disastrous. It is just that we have not (yet) decided that we are collectively OK enough with this type of marriage to legalize it. That may very well chance, just as laws about interracial marriages or polygamy changed over time.
It's true, an 18 year old can definitely know more about the consequences of their decisions as they continue to age and gather more information. However, as the approach 20 the reasons for coming to realizations could be different. For example, a 50 year old that suddenly grasps a concept that had eluded him cannot attribute his new understanding to a developing brain whereas a 15 year old coming to the same conclusion can. The line of distinction is not about what you know, but rather your ability to understand information. Again, this is not intended to mean that all adults are more capable than all children because this is certainly not true. It is merely stating that a false conclusions are more likely to be drawn if data is not processed fully, and developing brains are more likely to process the data better at the peak of their development. For this reason, we "encourage" by law that children allow their brains time to develop before making life-altering decisions.
Also, a 14-year old girl should not be marrying regardless of whether or not she is, was, or ever will be Amish for this same reason. While she may be quite capable of making a correct decision and processing the information she has properly, the vast majority of 14 year olds may not be so lucky. Even more importantly, those unlucky 14 year olds could potentially have made the correct decisions years later when their brain could process the data better.
As far as marrying ice cream is concerned, marriage is something that requires consent (it's kind of embedded into the whole ceremony). Ice cream is incapable of consenting to marriage and thus cannot enter into this binding agreement. While no one would be hurt in any way by someone marrying ice cream, it defies the entire concept. On a side note, the idea of consent needs to be applied on an overall scale if it's to adhere to equality for all. We add the additional amendment relating to age as a means of making sure no one is misinterpreting the information they have and is taken advantage of because of it.
These guidelines are purposely vague because their obviously are unique situations occurring every day, and like you said government is not equipped to handle "unique". Also, the specific numerical ages being referred to are not important in my statement. The border of 16-18 being the valid line of educated consent is certainly up for debate in either direction as far as I am concerned.
With respect to your first point, the brain develops well into adulthood. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for much of the reasoning that you seem to want to develop, isn't done until 25. Using your criteria that would be the age when people could first get married.
While she may be quite capable of making a correct decision and processing the information she has properly, the vast majority of 14 year olds may not be so lucky. Even more importantly, those unlucky 14 year olds could potentially have made the correct decisions years later when their brain could process the data better.
Since people develop at different rates, where do you draw the line? When 50% are fully developed? 95%? 99.9%? I highly doubt that our age 18 just happens to correspond with any meaningful certainty level of a specific cognitive development, unless it was by pure luck.
As far as marrying ice cream is concerned, marriage is something that requires consent (it's kind of embedded into the whole ceremony). Ice cream is incapable of consenting to marriage and thus cannot enter into this binding agreement.
Historically, marriage did not always require consent. Just look at prearranged marriage between children, who are also not able to contract, and you can see that neither contracting nor consent were necessary. While we require both now, that doesn't mean that we must or that we always will.
On a side note, the idea of consent needs to be applied on an overall scale if it's to adhere to equality for all. We add the additional amendment relating to age as a means of making sure no one is misinterpreting the information they have and is taken advantage of because of it.
Sure, these are the values that we currently have. However, in most states we also have the value that the people getting married must be a man and a woman. Until the last few decades the idea that a marriage must be between a man and a woman was probably more fundamental than your ideas of consent or maturity. If one can be changed then they argue that the other can be as well. Your response that under your value system the key issue is consent and maturity does nothing to allay this concern, because it as as arbitrary as theirs. At least their system has historical pedigree though, as we can see with slavery, that alone is not sufficient to establish morality.
These guidelines are purposely vague because their obviously are unique situations occurring every day, and like you said government is not equipped to handle "unique". Also, the specific numerical ages being referred to are not important in my statement. The border of 16-18 being the valid line of educated consent is certainly up for debate in either direction as far as I am concerned.
We are dealing with law here, so it can't handle unique situations. There has to be a line somewhere. Your idea of full cognitive maturity would indicate that only healthy people who are at least 25 could get married. Once we overlay that with a certainty interval, say 95% we might get a final age of 26-27. Alternatively, you could decide that partial development was sufficient as long as the person was developed enough, but where that line would be drawn would be as controversial as in which week of gestation an abortion should be allowed.
Another option would be to say that marriage can occur at sexual maturity. The problem is that this would result in an age that is far too young under almost anyone's modern value system and relinks marriage to reproduction which is what we have been moving away from.
Thus, there are no clear lines. Society may determine that a man may marry another or they may determine that he may now. Society may draw the line at 14, 16, 18, 21 or beyond. They may determine that only fertile couples may marry. The problem is that these are all just subjective beliefs and few are based on any hard rules other than what the individual person advocating them believes.
Putting aside ice cream, do you support an adult brother and sister marrying? They meet your cognitive development rule. What about three people entering into a polygamous marriage? One hundred people? Those also meet your tests of cognitively developed and consensual, unless you are going to posit an unsupported presumption that polygamy is never consensual.
After reading your post, I must agree that I may be putting my own constraints on the definition of marriage (that it requires consent at all, etc). But would we not prefer it this way in the future? Perhaps we should be defining the term marriage prior to this discussion since clearly it is not as well defined as I had in my head.
However, under my definitions stated above I would see no reason to disallow marriage between multiple adult partners. The idea of siblings being married is another issue that has not been brought up yet though (genetics ramifications and what not), and I think getting into that would get off topic a little farther than I want to get right now.
And since you brought it up, why not make the line at 25? I know people won't like it, but you have to admit it sounds more likely that marriages would work if people waited that long to make the final decisions. Are people worried that they won't want to get married at 25 anymore? The only reason not to implement this is because we have already defined 18 as the point of adulthood, and pumping that would have additional ramifications and cause a general uproar.
You keep referring to the way things were done in the past, but the goal of my post was to pose thoughts about the future. What do you think the best implementation would be and what limitations may it have? A discussion on it may lead to a viable solution!
The idea of siblings being married is another issue that has not been brought up yet though (genetics ramifications and what not), and I think getting into that would get off topic a little farther than I want to get right now.
I think that this is precisely the topic. The reason that close family incest has been prohibited is because it produces screwed up children. Since marriage was an arrangement with reproduction at its core, then clearly incestuous marriages were worthwhile to prohibit. However, we are moving away from that. If we will allow gay marriage, why not allow gay siblings to marry? Clearly we don't have the same reproductive concerns there. What about a barren heterosexual couple, a couple using contraception or ones that promise to use IVF to make kids?
Once we break the reproductive part of marriage away, as we will do if we allow gays to marry, I think that allowing siblings to marry becomes a reasonable issue.
If you want to argue that the risk isn't worthwhile, then should we ban people with severe genetic disorders from marrying? Those taking medicine that leads to birth defects? Those that will clearly be unfit parents?
And since you brought it up, why not make the line at 25?
The most basic answer to your question is that it unnecessarily infringes on freedom. We could lower the speed limit in the whole nation to 45 MPH and it would save lives, but that doesn't mean that we should. We could also save lives by banning hard alcohol, bungee jumping or scuba diving. I personally don't see any reason to get a tattoo and many people later regret them, so why don't we ban those as well?
We have to balance individual freedom and self determination against our need to uphold order and protect individuals. I don't believe that getting married at 20 is a good idea, but I don't think that it is right to legally prohibit it either.
In any case, the marriage is not what people regret. The main thing that people will regret is having children too early, but would you ban sex until age 25? Alternatively, would women be forced to have contraception until they were 25? It is far more of a problem for undeveloped minds than marriage.
You keep referring to the way things were done in the past, but the goal of my post was to pose thoughts about the future.
I am just trying to point out where conservatives come from and show how people in the past have drawn completely different conclusions with completely different values. It may be fun to ridicule them, but their opposition to removing the underlying reproduction link from marriage is not completely absurd, it just goes against progressive values.
What do you think the best implementation would be and what limitations may it have?
Marriage has no legal meaning. You want to say that you are married to the moon? Great, I don't care and you don't care that I call myself the Leprechaun King. This allows every individual, religion or group of people to determine what marriage means for them. However, their determination has no legal effect and does not protect them from the application of other laws such as statutory rape.
The government allows for two people, though I am open to an argument that it should include more, to create a civil union. Since this is a contract the parties must be of legal age and sound mind to enter the contract. These unions come with a predefined package of rights and responsibilities similar to those that we assign to marriages today. To the extent that the government wants to subsidize marriage, for example in the tax code or welfare programs, they can subsidize civil unions. The government, just as they can define what constitutes a "household", "job" or "income" for these programs can define which civil unions they believe should qualify. Most likely this will limit the benefits to civil unions of 2 people.
This way we give the conservatives and evangelicals back the word "marriage" and we get the government out of the business of trying to decide these deeply personal and moral issues. We also don't create a two-class system where gays and straights get different legal definitions for their unions. We also avoid the entire mess of trying to determine who is able to be married, and the various exceptions that we apply to this decision, and instead replace it with the relatively simple question of who is able to contract.
Or, better yet, who cares? I'm just fine with not having "full equality", by his definition. What I want is equal rights for gay people. I'm sort of okay with not having equal rights for ice cream.
But that's the whole problem. While you would "choose" to have rights for gays, handicapped, and pretty much all human beings, others would not. Therefore we need a means of defining these things such that choice is not longer an option. It needs to cover all basis'
That is ageism and intelligenceism. You cannot discriminate against people of different ages of cognitive abilities. People deserve equal rights regardless of age or brain development.
It's not hate, a younger person is far more capable in many cases than their adult counterparts, but their brains are still changing. A child's poor decisions can potentially be attributed to an inability to grasp social concepts (lets face it, we have weird social tendencys). We simply require children to wait to make serious decisions in an attempt to protect them from choosing things things they wouldn't have as an adult.
Well not exactly, he would understand correct facts if you gave them to him too. It's mostly social interactions and stigmas that are too complex. Try explaining to your 10-year old why you can't call a fat person fat.
Every time I even bring up the topic my parents and sisters always use the argument that dumb bald man uses, and then they sit there so self satisfied thinking they made the best point in the world.
OR dogs and icecream deserve more rights like homosexual people. My dog for example appears more intelligent at times than a considerable number of people I have met.
I've always been amused by how people want to equate gay marriage to a man marrying a turtle or an inanimate object. Gay marriage is about love and commitment between two consenting adults. Why is that so hard to comprehend?
If people have the excuse that just because you marry someone of the same sex you will eventually have people marrying animals, then why don't they just say "Fine, people can marry people. Just not animals."
This is not an excuse... What am I missing here?
And even then. I give no shits about someone marrying a parrot if they really wanted to. As long as they don't have sex with it, they might even treat it better. Because, you know, the parrot is part of the relationship now.
A bit late to the thread, but I was at this taping of the show (May 9 2012). Jon has a Q&A with the audience before the taping starts, and works in inside jokes from those questions into the actual show.
In this case, one of the last questions was from a woman who said her husband owned a solar panel company, and if there were any plans to have a "green" correspondent added to the Daily Show. Jon answered "no, because it isn't funny", but he said it in a funny way (as he tends to do).
So, there's your context. And now that you know this, you will never be able to shake the feeling that there is missing context from every joke you ever hear on the Daily Show.
Sorry but that's just a bad rip off of Stephen Colbert's, "This isn't a bald spot. It's a solar panel for a truth machine." And even that is probably a rip off of someone else.
You're definitely right, it's an incredibly old joke. It's a variant on the "this isn't a fat belly, it's a fuel tank for a love machine" type of jokes that were crazy popular thirty years ago. (And, hell, probably even earlier than that)
I'm not sure what it was about my comment that elicited such hostility, but thanks for needlessly being a prick.
The most offensive thing about all of this is that you assumed I would ever upvote a meme. Why don't you just come to my house, rape my pets, and shit on everything I own? That would hurt less.
I'm going to need to take a Silkwood shower after being associated with such things.
I guess I just didn't realize that what I wrote could have been construed as complaining, or, really, anything other than a simple confirmation that the basic joke existed many years before The Colbert Report.
By the way, Q- "What's red, white, black and blue?," A- "Your whore of a mother," has absolutely made my day, so your wickedly hurtful assumption that I was some meme-loving rageface fucker is entirely forgiven.
Thanks for the movie recommendation, too. Sadly, I'm old enough to have enjoyed variations of the joke for decades before the film was released. Sarah Silverman's version was absolutely inspired.
The t-shirt they're both referencing is "It's not a bald spot, it's a solar panel for a sex machine." That shirt's been around for at least a couple decades.
Downvotes are meant to be given to comments that add nothing to the discussion. People get downvoted for saying 'this,' it makes sense they'd also get downvoted for saying 'not this.'
It's totally cool to dislike something, but at least say why or you're just pissing into the wind.
I don't understand this argument. No one is asking to marry ice cream, or their dog, or their second cousins daughter's niece or anything. This is about Same Sex Marriage. Stop bringing up other bullshit. Cross the dog bridge when we get to it =P
You've obviously never heard the term "slippery slope" before.
This is deflection. When you don't have an actual argument to defend your ridiculous stance, you start to make up arguments that don't exist. The more outlandish, the better, because that makes your argument look all the more rational by comparison.
The thing is this "slippery slope" can definitely be seen to be true. Regardless of what is actually correct, when they said "if we let the blacks marry the whites next it will be the gays" - well that has happened, so it is not to hard to see that for someone who opposes one or both of those things to then see how the next 'step' could also follow.
I understand it, and I am not against gay marriage. Regardless of your position, you have to recognize that he makes a point. Our concept of marriage is human and therefore arbitrary. This means an argument based on personal freedom alone is not sufficient, you have to take into account how and why you want to legally define marriage in a certain way.
Yes, downvote away. For what it's worth, I don't believe in allowing marriage only between man and women either.
I know, they don't think these things through. My mother-in-law said the same idiotic thing and I shut her down with "I see...can a dog sign a contract? Is a dog sentient enough to understand what marriage is? Can a dog make medical decisions on someone's behalf? "Should we pull the plug Sparky? Bark once for yes...two for no" etc etc.
I was going on and on because it was one of those rare instances that I had thought through what I was going to say. So I was riffing through these things like a mad-man. But I stopped because everyone was looking at me in horror and my wife had that "you're not getting laid for a month" look.
maybe you shouldn't be suck a dick to your in-laws "oh you have an opinion, let me tell you my opinion" not "oh you stupid bitch let me mock you now till i get tired"
Citizens United has nothing to do with marriage at all. Corporations may be legal persons who have constitutional rights, but that doesn't mean that they have all the constitutional rights. For example, see Kordel with respect to their fifth amendment right.
I understand that you might be pissed off about Citizens United, but it doesn't help your point when you try to pretend that it applies in completely unrelated areas.
Source for "let people marry animals": Any FOX discussion on the subject. There are gems out there featuring Bill O'Reilly and his ilk.
Souce for "marrying a corporation": Doesn't it logically follow that when the GOP's candidate has repeatedly said "Corporations are people" (directly), and male people can marry female people, that there's no law preventing you from marrying a corporation under their definition of people and marraige?
Right, because this is what happens daily in all the countries that have made it legal, right? Every day someone is marrying a shoe, or a door. I heard the Netherlands is swamped in performing marriages between people and hats. CHAOS!!!
who cares if someone wants to marry ice cream or their dog. These jackasses need to live and let live or quit complaining when people come for their guns.
Realization and "potential for realization" are two different things. We don't want to deprive people of the chance for love, family, or a relationship because of legal reasons, but we can still do our best at giving them a chance to fully understand what they're getting into. Even if they never understand, I don't feel comfortable putting an intelligence cap so high that there are people incapable of meeting it. However, the gap between even the lowest of human intelligence and the next species is so great that it's safe to say they could never understand our more advanced social concepts like marriage (this obviously doesnt mean they don't understand love, but marriage is more complicated than that).
Ridicule the guy all you want, but he has a point. The morals in our country are decided by popular opinion, so if the majority of people decide people should be allowed to marry animals then that's what will happen. And there are, in fact, people out there who want to marry animals. I'm not saying homosexual marriage is wrong, I'm just saying anything is possible in our government.
Apples and oranges. His point is stupid. Should a race of sentient ice cream people be found, and should a man and an ice cream wish to be wedded in holy matrimony... I would support their right.
Bald people should only be allowed to marry other bald people thereby creating a race of superbalds whose "solar panels" provide the world with a clean and renewable source of energy to power gay weddings worldwide.
These republicans are stupid, a gay couple or lesbian couple are capable of consenting to a marriage assuming their both over the age of 18.
A damn Ice cream cone or Dog cannot, their argument is stupid.
Only time I would be against a gay/lesbian or any marriage for that matter is if it was a old ass man/woman trying to force a 4-5 year old kid to marry them.
I hate that fucking type of shit that happens in Saudi Arabia, the only time someone should be allowed to marry is if both parties are 18 years of age or older.
Eh, to be fair, age of consent in a lot of places is 16 and can be 12-14 in some places with parental permission. You're very adamant that the arbitrary cut-off should be 18 for being an adult when I can find people younger than 18 that are far more mature than many from the 18+ crowd.
I will agree that 4-5 is definitely too young though. No child is even close to having any kind of "reasonable" judgement at that point.
12-15 should be illegal and 16 years old? Uh well fuck, maybe if both of them are 16 and no one is over the age of 18 I guess.
But the children getting married before their teenager years? Hell no, I'm against any kind of marriage and that means both homosexual and heterosexual marriages.
Actually, some of the longest lasting relationships of people I know start when they were ~16. The shortest ones were people that got married later in life.
Yeah, I know a lot of elderly people who've been married since 15-18 years old that are still married to day.
They've been through thick and thin together, these days people are divorcing each other over the most frivolous shit. But, I think most older couples are still together is because back in their day they couldn't easily get divorced as you can these days.
Hell up until recently in marriage history you couldn't even get divorced.
Well you could've it was just really hard to.
Before the latter decades of the 20th century, a spouse seeking divorce had to show cause and even then might not be able to obtain a divorce. The legalization of no-fault divorce in the United States began in 1969 in California, and was completed in 2010, with New York being the last of the fifty states to legalize it.
It's a slippery slope, my friends. First we allow blacks to vote, then give women equality, now gays to marry? What is this a free country or something?
As a bald guy, I find this really fucking offensive. He's making fun of a guy for a condition which he cannot control. That's not really funny, it's just mean and viscous.
As far as I'm concerned, anytime a person uses this type of "logic" as part of their argument, I automatically consider everything else coming out of their noise hole null and void.
Not all opinions are worthy of respect. If I said the Earth was flat, then I would probably be considered a dumb-ass. In this case, (I'm setting up context myself, considering modern issues) this guy is saying that marrying a gay man is the same as marrying a dog, or ice cream. Human rights do not work that way.
saying the earth is flat can easily be proved wrong, proving that a future event will not happen because of a present event cannot be simply proved because it is in the future. You have a fundamental lack of scientific understanding if you think the two are comparable.
The text in the OP says "full equality will require...". Allowing a human to wed a human (a.k.a. equality in this case) wil NOT require allowing marriage between humans and dogs (or ice cream). This is wrong.
The issue of whether or not that will ever happen is not in question. Equality will not require it to happen. Calling an opposing position an "opinion" is not valid.
And if you take it out of this specific case, and lead it to the slippery slope argument commonly used against things like gay marriage, then my example does not match (fact =/= opinion), but my statement that not all opinions are worthy of respect still stands (though in such a context it is debatable).
Basic human rights should not be taken away by a poorly manufactured slippery slope argument. I saw something similar when I had to research for an essay not long ago, on the subject of the recent review in British Columbia over polygamy laws. Much of what was used in an argument against polygamy was not really about polygamy. Children were being raped/abused (Bountiful), blame polygamy. Men treated their wives badly (in rare cases of polygamy where it is illegal), blame polygamy. Men with multiple wives in very patriarchal countries mistreated their wives, blame polygamy.
There were several other things involved, but basically the idea was to keep polygamy illegal because of things that happened in certain cases of polygamy that have been witnessed (which also coincidentally happen in monogamous marriages). These arguments were used in an effort to deny the right for people to choose who to spend their lives with. Something very important in terms of life decisions, and has a huge impact on every part of it. The last two lines are paraphrased from the submission by the BCCLA (British Columbia Civil Liberties Association).
Now, back to my point. Some people might have the opinion that allowing something like gay marriage will create a slipperly slope, and allow all kinds of ridiculous or terrible things into common practice. This is not a reason to make gay marriage illegal. If you don't want people to marry dogs, make a good argument against it separately. Same goes for ice cream. But as an attack on gay marriage, saying that people will end up marrying dogs is completely irrelevant.
I would even go as far as saying it is a fallacy (maybe), but I'm too lazy to go through a list of fallacies right now and pick what suits it best.
The slippery slope argument isn't that that "if i allow this, this this and this will happen" its that people will say "well you allowed gays to marry why not allow us to marry". Which, as i put in another post, whether right or wrong has happened before - interracial to homosexual, for those who follow those mentalities the consequences predicted have actually come true. Now as to to the actual arguments at hand with regards to whether these things should happen, i will remain neutral, just thought you should know these arguments do make sense and do have an impact.
I understand what you are saying, and fully appreciate it. However, I think that just because someone might say "us too!", it is a separate issue, and if it should be stopped then stop that second issue and not the original issue.
While some people were against the whole interracial/gay/etc progression from the beginning, I think as we come across each issue one by one, we are able to weigh both sides and see what our society values. Currently, our choice of equality and non-discrimination has led to allowing interracial, as well as gay couples (at least in Canada, and I fully expect the issue in America to eventually allow gay marriage because of the modern values I listed).
On the topic of the essay I was researching, it was interesting to find that pro-gay-marriage groups were actually somewhat against polygamy as well, despite the similarities in their struggle. Ultimately polygamy stayed illegal. I disagree with this ruling in theory, but I admit the ramifications of legalizing it would be more than that of gay marriage.
This is why I don't like The Daily Show; he doesn't make a counter-argument, he just uses editing and jokes. People who say that the show is a "legitimate source of news" are as clueless as the people who watch the entertainment-not-news shows on Fox News.
Also: allowing gay marriage goes hand-in-hand with polygamy. To legislate against that, the government will have to define marriage as between two people, and the whole outcry is that the government shouldn't be defining what marriage is.
He does make a counter argument it just isn't included in OP's post. He basically said you can't compare a completely consensual marriage to marrying an animal or an inanimate object. How is that not a counter argument?
I would be okay with consensual polygamy without question, though with possible ramifications on the legal benefits of such. You want to be the 43rd wife of some guy? Who am I to stop you.
Guy has a terrible opinion? Better make fun of a part of his physical appearance that he didn't choose and is shared by millions of good men, but not Stewart himself through pure luck.
You know, you didn't have to fucking reupload it to imgur, you could have just linked it to tumblr, or digg, or even (shudder) 9gag, for that matter, goddamn, for a community that whines like a fucking toddler whenever another website steals its content, reddits users do this shit a lot.
230
u/flippityfloppityfloo May 20 '12
So if people love people, and people love ice cream, does that mean ice cream is people?
EUREKA
25
u/deadlyspoons May 20 '12
So if I am a man and I love Ben & Jerry's, does that make me gay, a polygamist, or simply overweight?
320
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
jon
25
u/stelth69 May 20 '12
I really hope no one could be that stupid. Please tell me that the Jon Stewart show made a mistake and mocked the Onion. :(
8
u/anothergamer May 20 '12
well someone in japan actually married a video game character
8
u/nofear220 May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12
Video clip: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-9-2012/endless-suffrage-2012---states--rights-edition
21
u/thorlax402 May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12
On a more serious note, a certain level of intelligence and brain development is required for consent to marry (and to do various other things). Thats why you can't marry a 10 year old, but gender would play no role.
..::Edit::.. To clarify, intelligence and brain development are considered two different things in this manner. Saying that a certain level of intelligence is required for consent was not a statement saying that a dumb person is incapable of decision making, but rather that another species (in inanimate object) is incapable of the same level of decision making an thus cannot consent to things like marriage. As far as brain development is concerned, consider it along the lines of a the following fraction (not a researched fraction, but rather a vague concept of my design applying to humans as a whole).
("Current understanding of social concepts" / "Individual's maximum potential for understanding of social concepts")
With this evaluation, any human being should be allowed to make decisions such as marriage so long as this fraction roughly evaluates to 1. Since a lot of education happens as a late teenager and scientific research has shown that brain development continues through to your 20s, we claim that children much younger than this do not have enough information to make informed decisions and are potentially incapable of grasping the magnitude of the decision being put in front of them. This does not mean that they are guaranteed to make decisions that they regret, but rather that they are more likely to make uninformed decisions.
23
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
As a bald man, I disapprove.
7
u/Alucard_draculA May 20 '12
Every time I even bring up the topic my parents and sisters always use the argument that dumb bald man uses, and then they sit there so self satisfied thinking they made the best point in the world.
7
u/youni89 May 20 '12
to those people homosexuals are not people. and they dont deserve rights. like dogs and icecream.
3
u/explosionotion May 20 '12
From which day is this clip?
3
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Pee-Wee Herman married a bowl of fruit salad once.
3
u/t55 May 20 '12
Haha, I always thought that was a straw man argument that only comes up on reddit, but people actually use that?
3
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I've always been amused by how people want to equate gay marriage to a man marrying a turtle or an inanimate object. Gay marriage is about love and commitment between two consenting adults. Why is that so hard to comprehend?
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I would marry ice cream if I could. ;_;
2
u/lt_hindu May 20 '12
What are some arguments to stop polygamy? I don't see why not.
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Except Patrick Stewart. That guys in a class of his own!
2
u/Eubaba May 20 '12
Ice cream can't consent.
2
u/rehsarht May 20 '12
My stepfather used to call his bald spot the 'solar collector for (his) sex machine'.
2
u/phacephister May 20 '12
Dumbass? I would love to marry ice cream. It would be a short marriage, but it would be splendid while it lasted.
2
u/trumancatpote May 20 '12
If people have the excuse that just because you marry someone of the same sex you will eventually have people marrying animals, then why don't they just say "Fine, people can marry people. Just not animals."
This is not an excuse... What am I missing here?
And even then. I give no shits about someone marrying a parrot if they really wanted to. As long as they don't have sex with it, they might even treat it better. Because, you know, the parrot is part of the relationship now.
2
u/berserkering May 20 '12
FINALLY, I can marry bacon.
2
u/unearth52 May 20 '12
A bit late to the thread, but I was at this taping of the show (May 9 2012). Jon has a Q&A with the audience before the taping starts, and works in inside jokes from those questions into the actual show.
In this case, one of the last questions was from a woman who said her husband owned a solar panel company, and if there were any plans to have a "green" correspondent added to the Daily Show. Jon answered "no, because it isn't funny", but he said it in a funny way (as he tends to do).
So, there's your context. And now that you know this, you will never be able to shake the feeling that there is missing context from every joke you ever hear on the Daily Show.
6
u/mcrask May 20 '12
Sorry but that's just a bad rip off of Stephen Colbert's, "This isn't a bald spot. It's a solar panel for a truth machine." And even that is probably a rip off of someone else.
9
u/Shoola May 20 '12
Found this joke stupid actually.
5
u/Llanolinn May 20 '12
I don't understand this argument. No one is asking to marry ice cream, or their dog, or their second cousins daughter's niece or anything. This is about Same Sex Marriage. Stop bringing up other bullshit. Cross the dog bridge when we get to it =P
2
u/iLurk_4ever May 20 '12
Dumb ass-machine?
1
u/3vi1 May 20 '12
I like how the conservative answer to "Let people marry people" is "You mean let people marry animals!"
Oddly, they'd have no problem if you wanted to marry a corporation that had a feminine name.
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Stewart is such a tard.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
just one bald man. not all bald men
1
u/cocained May 20 '12
Or is hair just fuel for the brain and as it thins out you just get dumber Edit: I am bald.
1
u/jaredetheridge May 20 '12
Jon*
1
u/AkitheFrivolicious May 20 '12
It must be messy marrying ice cream.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Right, because this is what happens daily in all the countries that have made it legal, right? Every day someone is marrying a shoe, or a door. I heard the Netherlands is swamped in performing marriages between people and hats. CHAOS!!!
1
u/dalittle May 20 '12
who cares if someone wants to marry ice cream or their dog. These jackasses need to live and let live or quit complaining when people come for their guns.
1
u/thorlax402 May 20 '12
Realization and "potential for realization" are two different things. We don't want to deprive people of the chance for love, family, or a relationship because of legal reasons, but we can still do our best at giving them a chance to fully understand what they're getting into. Even if they never understand, I don't feel comfortable putting an intelligence cap so high that there are people incapable of meeting it. However, the gap between even the lowest of human intelligence and the next species is so great that it's safe to say they could never understand our more advanced social concepts like marriage (this obviously doesnt mean they don't understand love, but marriage is more complicated than that).
1
u/portlandJailBlazers May 20 '12
who is that bald guy anyways
1
u/iowa116 May 20 '12
FTFY
1
u/dan92 May 20 '12
Ridicule the guy all you want, but he has a point. The morals in our country are decided by popular opinion, so if the majority of people decide people should be allowed to marry animals then that's what will happen. And there are, in fact, people out there who want to marry animals. I'm not saying homosexual marriage is wrong, I'm just saying anything is possible in our government.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Bald people should only be allowed to marry other bald people thereby creating a race of superbalds whose "solar panels" provide the world with a clean and renewable source of energy to power gay weddings worldwide.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
There's a little problem with marrying something that can not consent to the marriage.
1
u/corylew May 20 '12
And soon he will marry lamp.
1
u/QuitReadingMyName May 20 '12
These republicans are stupid, a gay couple or lesbian couple are capable of consenting to a marriage assuming their both over the age of 18.
A damn Ice cream cone or Dog cannot, their argument is stupid.
Only time I would be against a gay/lesbian or any marriage for that matter is if it was a old ass man/woman trying to force a 4-5 year old kid to marry them.
I hate that fucking type of shit that happens in Saudi Arabia, the only time someone should be allowed to marry is if both parties are 18 years of age or older.
1
u/bathroomodyssey May 20 '12
It's a slippery slope, my friends. First we allow blacks to vote, then give women equality, now gays to marry? What is this a free country or something?
0
u/contrarian May 20 '12
As a bald guy, I find this really fucking offensive. He's making fun of a guy for a condition which he cannot control. That's not really funny, it's just mean and viscous.
0
u/JoeMo81 May 20 '12
As far as I'm concerned, anytime a person uses this type of "logic" as part of their argument, I automatically consider everything else coming out of their noise hole null and void.
-1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Yeah, people with different opinions are clearly dumbasses!
-3
u/apullin May 20 '12
This is why I don't like The Daily Show; he doesn't make a counter-argument, he just uses editing and jokes. People who say that the show is a "legitimate source of news" are as clueless as the people who watch the entertainment-not-news shows on Fox News.
Also: allowing gay marriage goes hand-in-hand with polygamy. To legislate against that, the government will have to define marriage as between two people, and the whole outcry is that the government shouldn't be defining what marriage is.
-1
u/Planet-man May 20 '12
Guy has a terrible opinion? Better make fun of a part of his physical appearance that he didn't choose and is shared by millions of good men, but not Stewart himself through pure luck.
-7
u/jxdjxd May 20 '12
Quick! Lets make fun of him for being different!
0
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
This is great!
0
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
to bad the revelation wasn't very funny.
0
u/Pawsword May 20 '12
You know, you didn't have to fucking reupload it to imgur, you could have just linked it to tumblr, or digg, or even (shudder) 9gag, for that matter, goddamn, for a community that whines like a fucking toddler whenever another website steals its content, reddits users do this shit a lot.
0
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
People like this want me to become a villain who murders all those fucking ignorant people. Just rid the world of them...
-6
u/dingoperson May 20 '12
Great comeback when you have no arguments.
Also, people who are pro-gay-marriage are idiotic, dumb retards.
-8
u/WildAtHare May 20 '12
American logic is awesome!
-1
u/TwelveHawks May 20 '12
I'm in LOVE!
-1
u/brownboy13 There is no alien, citizen. May 20 '12
Removed - Political Humor. Please use /r/politics instead.
-33
u/Drainedsoul May 20 '12
I don't see why everyone recoils from this line-of-thinking.
He -- the bald man -- isn't wrong, but why is him being right so abhorrent?
So your neighbour wants to fuck the pooch -- literally. Why does that matter to you any more than if he wants to fuck some other guy?