I'm passing along something here, and it's not something I believe myself, but I think it provides a rational secular argument that at least has the benefit of stating a well thought position:
Redefining "marriage" is like redefining "freedom." Both words appear in laws without any explanation of what they mean, and that's because their meaning was considered self-evident when those laws were written. If a word like "marriage" can be redefined to mean something so completely different from what it meant two centuries ago, that opens the door to redefinition of any other legal term when it becomes convenient. Soon words like "liberty" and "justice" could mean something very different too.
[My disagreement with this argument is that the efforts to extend the definition of marriage to include same sex partners doesn't in any way restrict the marriages of opposite sex partners. So no restrictive redefinition is happening.]
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Date: 2008-11-05 10:35 pm (UTC)Redefining "marriage" is like redefining "freedom." Both words appear in laws without any explanation of what they mean, and that's because their meaning was considered self-evident when those laws were written. If a word like "marriage" can be redefined to mean something so completely different from what it meant two centuries ago, that opens the door to redefinition of any other legal term when it becomes convenient. Soon words like "liberty" and "justice" could mean something very different too.
[My disagreement with this argument is that the efforts to extend the definition of marriage to include same sex partners doesn't in any way restrict the marriages of opposite sex partners. So no restrictive redefinition is happening.]