Won't somebody please think of the half-human-half-box-turtle children???

yah, my mind wandered while I was working out today. I thought, am I saying inter-species marriage is wrong? What about Spock's parents? So I decided any being with the capability of informed consent has the right to marry any other being with the same capability.

My true feeling on marriage is that it is a spiritual contract and as such the state should not be involved at all.

wait until Science creates a genetically modified talking box turtle.

Then that'll be the SciFi Channel movie of the week! A courtroom drama, as the box turtle sues for her right to self-determination! Staring William Shatner, representing the State in its attempt to prevent the marriage, and Keanu Reeves as the turtle's attorney....

They could never make that movie. There wouldn't be able to build the sets fast enough, what with all of the scenery chewing of Shatner and Reeves (they fight crime!)

My true feeling on marriage is that it is a spiritual contract and as such the state should not be involved at all.

Hmm. Don't know how I feel about that one. It's legal rights that my partner and I are getting 'married' for. (We're not thinking about any kind of blessing-type ceremony until we can decide what a Jewish atheist and a practising Christian are supposed to do for that.) Right now we just want to make sure that we can have next-of-kin rights and the related stuff. And I get that there are ways whereby that could happen without our cultural concept of marriage being involved, but the minute you start talking about legal rights, you're talking about the state to at least some extent.

half-human-half-box-turtle

But it's already happened!

But it's already happened!

But in that case it was a male box turtle and a female human. That's just sick.

the minute you start talking about legal rights, you're talking about the state to at least some extent.

Oh yeah, and I'm certainly not going to start campaigning to dissolve all existing marriages. It's a belief I hold not strongly enough to fight for, that the state never should have married anyone in the first place.

First you allow gay marriage and then the slope slips to allow siblings or animals or children or whatever.

The Equal Right Amendment didn't pass because of all those slippery slope arguments. One of them, of course, was "Your daughter will be in combat." and another extemely common was "You'll have unisex bathrooms." Hmmm. (Theoretically, women still can't serve in combat roles. That affects their chances for promotion, yet bullets and roadside bombs seem to be completely unaware of their non-combat status.) We've frequently ended up at the bottom of the slippery slope without the republic falling, but also without any legal gains.

My true feeling on marriage is that it is a spiritual contract and as such the state should not be involved at all.

My belief is that marriage is a civil contract that offers specific legal rights and privileges, such as survivor benefits, pensions and inheritance. Churches should be free to offer any type of "spiritual union" they want, even between a man and his beloved box turtle, but that should have no legal standing.

Every time I logically argue these issues in my head I end up in the same place Laga is, but there needs to be a state-sanctioned way of saying "This person who wasn't part of my family before IS, now." for all sorts of legal reasons, and I can't see calling that anything but marriage.

Of course, under that idea of marriage there's no reason to allow siblings to marry, really, unless it's just to say "This sister is more important than the other ones if it comes to a fight."

Maybe the solution is a giant database where every person in the world ranks the closeness and importance of every other person in the world (with born family defaulting to some highish number and most others defaulting to zero). Visitation rights are granted to anybody with an importance level over some cutoff. So to marry somebody, you just raise their number to higher than all (or most) others.

To my I-like-preferential-voting head, that sounds kind of... awesome. And it would totally bring new meaning to the phrase "You just gained some points with me!"

It's bullshit that they can somehow say it's okay for *some* gay people to be married, but then no more.

Exactly! I can only imagine how frustrating this is for all the couples whether they managed to get married during the brief window of opportunity or not. What is the next step?

Well, Bobby has plain old strep throat and nothing more dire. The doc also looked at his leg which is about 1/3 covered with scab from a bike mishap. He declared that to look appropriately gross for road burn. Back to school Thursday or Friday. DH gets strep if anyone near gets it while I have never had it. I'm trying to get him to gargle a few times a day to keep it at bay. I think I will keep with my strep free streak.