And, you can visit him in the hospital!
Honestly, what more do you want??? (/s, in case it wasn’t obvious)
actually, if they don’t accept you as a woman, couldn’t shouldn’t you be allowed to marry a woman and it wouldn’t be considered gay
Oddly enough, that doesn’t really make me feel better.
Final post on this, and then I have to go figure out what type of interest to use in a calculation (the age old question of being slightly more accurate vs doing something simple that non-math folks can understand): All forms of bigotry and prejudice are on a continuous spectrum, if not multi-dimensional space, rather than binary. Opposing same sex marriage is a stronger prejudice than feeling squeamish watching a gay sex scene in a TV show, but weaker than going around beating up gay people. Different people will have different opinions about where they want to draw the line of being anti-gay, and different cultures will likewise have different opinions about where to draw that line. In today’s society in the US, I think it is reasonable to say that opposing gay marriage is anti-gay. 25 years ago, when the shortcomings of civil unions were not well known, I think you could argue that it was not anti-gay to support civil unions as a compromise. Times have changed, what is well known has changed, and so the standards can reasonably change too.
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At least in the US, in “gay marriage” debates has shown that people who hold such views due to simple ignorance also tend to hold multiple other views out of ignorance that, in total, roll up to something that can be described as “anti-gay”.
People who hold such views through simple ignorance don’t necessarily have malice in their views, which may be what you’re trying to communicate…but their views are almost always “anti-gay” to one degree or another. (“Almost always” should be read here as “I am not aware of it not occurring, but I suppose that it’s technically theoretically possible”.)
Sadly, I know of situations, even today, where a hospital won’t recognize non-traditional families, and bigoted families are able to lock a patient’s primary partner out from decision-making and visitation.
sorry, was being tongue in cheek where I shouldn’t have been.
I am not sure agree that opposing gay marriage is “weaker” than beating up gay people
Beating up someone is a violent visceral reaction of people who lack the intellectual ability to respond in any other way. Eliminating their rights, are a cold, calculated way to diminish the whole group and ultimately can be more damaging.
ok so youre saying there is literally no conceivable way that a person could be against gay marriage without harbouring deeply held prejudice against homosexuality? and all the hypotheticals that i mention are simply theoretical constructs that have no actual applicability? can you tell im a mathematician?
It all compresses to mental gymnastics to make you feel better about bigotry.
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Absolute questions like this are intellectual masturbation.
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the discussion is about labelling people and has nothing to do with my own personal views which as a non religious french canadian are much more progressive than you thinnk. calm down.
Ok, not your views, but the views you are arguing in this thread.
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I’m someone who, in past lives, worked on drafting legislative language and wrote policy forms, and who in my current life is in a role where I focus most of my efforts quantifying the implications of extremely improbable things. 
I am also someone who grew up in a time and location where I sadly have a LOT of exposure to the varied forms that bigotry can manifest, and that experience is compounded by my skin pigmentation not matching my cultural/ethnic background, and by my not fitting in with the stereotypes surrounding my apparent gender common at that time/place. While I have the privilege of generally not having blatant bigotry directed specifically at me, I’m also very aware of the existence and nastiness of indirect, unintentional bigotry.
It’s tempting to make a distinction between blatant, directed bigotry and indirect, unintentional bigotry…but that’s kind of like making a distinction between layers of hell. It’s still hell.
So, with that background in mind, I am saying that, in contemporary Western culture, a person who, when challenged, expresses opposition to civil unions (commonly called “marriage”) between gay people is expressing prejudice against homosexuality. Period.
I will not go so far as to describe that as “deeply held prejudice”, given possible differing interpretations of the phrase “deeply held”. Some people holding such views might not be aware of their prejudice, and/or they might not feel ill will towards gay people…but that doesn’t make them any less prejudiced.
Regarding my weasel-words around civil union / “marriage”: I do have the benefit of being acquainted with a couple of somewhat-liberal Roman Catholics who believe that “marriage” is a religious sacrament reserved for potential procreation. They would argue that an infertile person cannot receive that sacrament, and they do not otherwise perceive a prerequisite of fertility or sexuality on people forming unions that are completely equivalent to “marriage” aside from the religious sacrament aspect. I disagree with their views… but their belief that infertile straight people cannot receive the sacrament of “marriage” is at least logically consistent, and enough to cause me to perceive their views as something other than prejudice against homosexuality.
Is it possible that, even with the level of precision I have so far used in this comment, there may be other exceptions? Yes. However, just like the 1:100,000 results in some of my models, it’s possible but so improbable that I don’t see a need to further torture my answer in the present context to accommodate.
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I thought that was the purpose of family benefits like the Child Tax Credit and Survivor benefits on Social Security.
I thought the reason for stuff like the Married Filing Jointly tax status was in recognition that a married couple often has finances that are so intertwined that it’s illogical to treat them independently.
Like if a spouse is not working (for any reason) and his or her income is $0, does it make more sense to treat that person as an individual and put them on Medicaid and food stamps or does it make more sense to consider the couple as a unit and say “this isn’t one person making $300,000 and one person making $0; it’s two people jointly making $300,000”?
to be honest, im not that familiar with the religious arguments against gay marriage. Are most of the arguments based on the premise that homosexuality is a sin? the example you give with the roman catholics is exceptional? would you characterize them as being “anti-gay”? what do you think of this article:
As a gay man, I found myself disappointed with this definition—that anyone with any sort of moral reservations about gay marriage is by definition anti-gay.
It’s an 11 year old paywalled article from 2 years before Obergefell. If you want people to read it, you need to put in more than the link, and it disregards any arguments about how standards evolve over time.
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“As a white man, I found myself disappointed with this definition - that anyone with any sort of moral reservations about emancipation is by definition anti-Black.”
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to be honest, im not that familiar with the religious arguments against gay marriage.
Yes, they believe homosexuality is a sin. For people who believe in the Bible as inerrant:
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
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Gotta say God giving people depraved thoughts sorta feels like he owns some of the blame for anyone with a foot fetish and other supposed sins.
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Reading comprehension check…
I thought there was something more philosophical behind the reasons for being against gay marriage from a religious perspective.
heres a quote:
I would argue that an essential feature of the term “homophobia” must include personal animus or malice toward the gay community. Simply having reservations about gay marriage might be anti-gay marriage , but if the reservations are articulated in a respectful way, I see no reason to dismiss the person holding those reservations as anti-gay people. In other words, I think it’s quite possible for marriage-equality opponents to have flawed reasoning without necessarily having flawed character. When we hastily label our opposition with terms like “anti-gay,” we make an unwarranted leap from the first description to the second.