Not at all (AT ALL) defending Prop 8 here, but where do you draw the line in cutting these people out of your life? Take the issue of abortion, which is easier to see that there are no easy answers. You either believe that abortion is MURDER or stopping abortion curtails PERSONAL LIBERTY for all women. Either way, people are defending a highly moral position and you can argue against their conclusions but you should at least try to respect their personal opinion, especially if they afford you that same respect.
I look at the new Lincoln movie and that makes a lot of these points for me. Everyone is entitled to shun bigots and work only with people they agree with, but there is an opportunity to improve things for everyone by sitting down at the same table with people we disagree with rather than vilifying their existence.
There is pretty clearly a line between those two moral choices.
The abortion debate is basically a balancing act between two undesirable outcomes. No one likes abortions, but no one (by simple definition) wants unwanted children, either. Choosing either outcome is very much a moral gray area; how do you know you've made the correct decision? I don't think anyone has the right to make that decision for someone else, but I completely understand where the other side is coming from.
On the other hand, there is no such balancing act in same sex marriage. It is an entirely positive, beneficial expression of love between two individuals. There is no choosing a lesser evil, it's simply a good thing. Why would any reasonable person choose to prevent a good thing for absolutely no reason at all? I can't understand the other side at all, because they aren't using any sort of logic to arrive at their conclusion.
Frankly, very few issues these days are as stark right-and-wrong as same sex marriage is. I think it's entirely reasonable to shun and openly shame homophobes in 2013. Perhaps you have the patience to sit down and try to talk with these lunatics, but I don't have that kind of patience. Just like racists, homophobes deserve nothing but derision, and just like slavers, they deserve to ultimately be nothing more than a chapter in a civil rights history text. I won't have them in my life, and I am missing nothing by their exclusion.
Problem is plenty of people aren't reasonable, or may be reasonable but refuse to apply reason to some discussions; you can probably thank religion for that.
It is entirely possible that future generations will look back on the debate and just laugh at it as we laugh at people who used to burn witches. You will certainly find people today who would think it was disgusting and offensive to even think of supporting gay marriage and these people have some considerable % of the money and votes so you can't really dismiss them.
So the purpose should not be to enforce views, but to enforce certain actions. So you can be as racist as you want , but you can't refuse somebody a job on the basis of race.
Prop 8 seems like a clear confusion between legal marriage and religious marriage.
If you believe in a religion that is against gay sex, gay marriage can appear to co-opt your religious construct of marriage, and change the definition of what marriage is and what is supposed to represent in a religious context. Obviously the legal definition is different than whatever random religion's definition, but that can be a too subtle distinction for many voters.
"Derision" might be more satisfying than educating these people, but remember we are talking about more than HALF of California right now. As Dave Chappelle says, the worst thing you can do is call someone crazy - it's dismissive. It's important to remember that MOST people who are racist or homophobic not because of "ignorance" but because it's what they were taught by those around them growing up. Believing in the inherent goodness of people is what has allowed us to go from a deeply racist society (as recently as the 70s-80s) to having a black president. Many older people WHO WERE RAISED RACIST were able to be educated and turn the tide on racism over the course of a few decades. I find that incredibly encouraging and allows for you to separate deeply negative beliefs from the people that currently hold them.
If you condition on "a foetus is as valuable as a baby", which is something that a lot of people believe...
Then even if you accept that to deny abortion is to curtail women's liberty, and this is bad, so that preventing abortion is not an unmitigated good...
And even if you accept that allowing gay marriage is an unmitigated good...
Then it still seems to me like abortion is a much more pressing issue than gay marriage. It's a trade-off, but that doesn't mean the answer isn't obvious, and it doesn't mean that a good thing which isn't a trade-off will necessarily be more valuable.
(There are three "if you believe..." statements in this post. I want to make it clear that I'm not endorsing or disendorsing any of those beliefs.)
If abortion were rare, I might agree with you that there is some trade-off involved that we have to consider, some hard-luck cases. But about 25% of my generation was killed by abortion, including 50% of black babies. That's sickening, and the word "genocide" starts to creep into my mind.
The same sex marriage debate is nowhere near as urgent or serious as the abortion debate.
Serious issues like abortion must be approached with more care than you are offering it. Call things like they are, firstly, and avoid bending the English language for dramatic effect. Abortions deal with an "embryo" or "fetus", not a "baby" or a "generation", both of which are born beings (out of the womb). The argument is thus not "is it ok to murder people?", as you're trying to make it look like (we've solved that ethical problem already...), but rather, the question is "when does an embryo become a 'person'?".
> "Serious issues like abortion must be approached with more care than you are offering it"
The same can be said for same-sex marriage and related issues (polygamy, civil unions for widows/widowers who don't want to remarry, the imposition of religious definitions on secular society OR secular definitions on religion, and so on.) Can you give me a good reason why the benefits attached to marriage should be attached to family A but not family B? Does your reasoning hold up when introducing family C into the mix? What if one family doesn't want to use the term "marriage" but another does?
Take my family: I live with my wife, my son, my sister, and her son. I'm responsible for both children during the normal work day. It seems reasonable that this family arrangement should allow us certain benefits which are presently tied to marriage, like access to my nephew's school records and being able to schedule medical appointments for him.
As the rest of your comment demonstrates, if you choose certain terminology, you can make complex issues appear to have obvious and simple solutions. The question of how to legally define family relationships deserves far more care than it's usually given.
The language has already been corrupted. I am correcting that. It's amazing what people can get comfortable with when Kermit Gosnell is "snipping" "fetuses" instead of beheading babies.
The fact is that real people that would have existed now don't (50 million Americans since Roe v. Wade). That may not be murder, but it is certainly something akin. Filling the language with euphemisms doesn't change the reality.
You are again pushing the "beheading" and "murder" argument, which is not what people disagree on. People agree already that these things are wrong (wow!). But you just hinted at what the problem actually is when you said "That may not be murder, but it is certainly something akin". So, again, the question is: what is it? When is it murder? Can I kill sperm? Can I let a woman have her period? Can I kill an egg that has just come into contact with a sperm? What about 1 second later? 1 minute after?
Keep in mind, I'm not even taking a position here. I'm just letting you know what the fuss is about.
Not at all (AT ALL) defending Prop 8 here, but where do you draw the line in cutting these people out of your life? Take the issue of abortion, which is easier to see that there are no easy answers. You either believe that abortion is MURDER or stopping abortion curtails PERSONAL LIBERTY for all women. Either way, people are defending a highly moral position and you can argue against their conclusions but you should at least try to respect their personal opinion, especially if they afford you that same respect.
I look at the new Lincoln movie and that makes a lot of these points for me. Everyone is entitled to shun bigots and work only with people they agree with, but there is an opportunity to improve things for everyone by sitting down at the same table with people we disagree with rather than vilifying their existence.