Sigh. It's a-hole posts like this that make the average visitor to this site think you guys are no better than that wingnuts over at RIFuture.

Greg, spare me the self-righteousness. I enjoy the vast majority of your commentary on this sight, but no one can argue that much of what you offer can't be considered "a-holish" on its own. I suppose one's judgment as to the veracity of a point changes based on disagreement over acute issues, eh?

It's a big difference between a loudmouth malcontent comment poster and one of the guys who's posts set the example. If someone visited this site today for the first time and read this topic the likely response could likely be "Another of those slippery-slope, hyperbolic douches like Crowley".

When somebody reads my comments they just dismiss me as a moron and move on to the next comment. Except Bobby Walsh. He hires investigators to learn everything there is to know about me because I'm SUCH a threat.

Great idea Marc!

With the cost of veterinary care getting beyond affordable, my wife wants to ask the courts to allow her to marry her true love, our dog! It's not about the sex, just the love...and the health care benefits. Can anyone ecommend a good lawyer to take up the cause?

Gay marriage to those of us in a healthy hetero marriage:
No harm, no foul.
'Nuff said.

Greg, Point taken and your opinion is noted. I hope you'll forgive me for indulging in a bit of smart-a**ery every now and then.

Marc, good point. Why should single people be forced to suffer tax disadvantages? Unfair if you ask me, or my brother Steve.

Marc,

As the biggest smarta$$ I know, I will always indulge when others partake.

I'd say no offense was intended, but it was. Not because I don't like you but because I do.

Marc,

I agree with Greg to an extent that the post is an extreme exaggeration not to mention malicious. You are effectively asserting that there is no coherent argument to support the legal recognition of same-sex couples.

You mocked that same-sex couples right to marry is the legal and social equivalent to someone wanting to marry themselves. This puts you in the same class as those who mock George Bush for the Iraq war by saying, ‘what next? Will he bomb Africa, Cuba, maybe even Canada?’ Of course there is a huge difference in the realities of those countries and Iraq with regard to National Security, but those realities are ignored just as your post ignores realities for the sack of rhetoric and humor.

If you would have gone to something like ‘if opposite-sex marriage is unconstitutional then denying me the right to marry myself may also be unconstitutional’ or even the linking the same-sex marriage arguments to incest or polygamy, those are legit issues to take on and even mock, but your post went much further than that.

I think Greg has a point in saying the post was unworthy of you and this site.

Hey, we're all entitled to some occasional Swiftian excess.

Geeze, sometimes these things just go right over my head. I thought Marc's post was meant to be satire.

Rather than take offense at Marc's post on the grounds that it trivializes or ridicules the opposing position, and rather than just chuckling at its Swiftian satire, I think we should take the argument pefectly seriously.

Why DON'T we let people marry themselves?

I see two consequences to asking the question.

1) It makes us ask, why DO we confer benefits (tax and otherwise) on people who marry at all? Why do we encourage marriage (and thus punish those who, for whatever reason, don't want to permanently partner with another)? If there is no good reason to do so, then we should just abolish civil marriage entirely (letting the churches do as they will, of course).

If there are reasons, Marc's post suggest this requires a secular argument based on public policy and social consequences, one that neither simply defines marriage, a priori, as a relation between a man and a woman, nor proclaims that opposite-sex marriage is divinely mandated. I think this is actually a positive step in the debate.

2. Once we've specified those secular reasons why we reward marriage, we can then ask whether or not those reasons apply equally, or differently, to same-sex and opposite-sex marriages.

Thus, I think that Marc's "immodest proposal" is, perhaps ironically, very helpful.

Funny that you should find Marc's commentary to introduce something new to the discussion, Thomas, inasmuch as every argument against SSM that any Anchor Rising contributor has ever made, to my recollection, has been founded on (and often explicitly stated) precisely the intellectual consequences that you suggest.

Perhaps it just took the satire to pierce the prejudice.

Hi Justin,

I didn't say Marc's post raised "something new"; I just said that seeing it as a sincere question was actually more helpful that seeing it as derision or satire.

I don't think you should be so quick to impute "prejudice". While it is true that the vast majority of anti-SSM commentary I see day-to-day is based on religion or some form of natural law, I wasn't making any comment on AR contributors. Nor would I, because I generally just skip the SSM posts here. This one just caught my attention because of the title.

Thomas,
Your reaction was the one I was hoping to elicit and the goal of my satirical post. Justin is right: we've brought these up before. But the fact that I was able to catch your attention with that type of post illustrates that sometimes satire is the best way to draw people into a good-faith debate.

I thought the whole posting was satire laid out with a compelling argument.

Of course no one is going to read the post and think someone can marry themselves or their true love that doesn't involve another person.

Steve Bousquet would marry a quahog, right?

I've visited this site only because of the immigration post from Monique and started to read other topic posts.

Very interesting and this site gives me hope that there is intelligent life in RI.

i dont understand you all