mooeypoo

If it wasn't clear from my message, there was more than one person at fault in the recent degradation of this thread. Seeing as there were about three more moderators posting moderation comments on the thread, it is no longer an issue of whether or not moderators are aware of the problems of this thread or not. I suggest we *ALL* drop the instinct to call each other troll and/or fall through the traps we lay to one another. Start afresh, or let this one go. That wasn't meant for a single person. ~moo

This is unbelievable. This thread is full of ad hominem attacks and derogatory comments. Whether the people stating those comments are right about their opponents is utterly irrelevant: This should stop. Okay, how 'bout everyone takes a deep breath, steps back from the keyboard, go gets laid, and comes back with a fresh view, because this is the third time moderators are trying to keep this thread on the right track. So here's what we're going to do: 1. We are going to stop calling people trolls, even if we really think they are. Instead, we are going to report threads that we believe are examples of trolling and let the moderators deal with that. 2. We are going to stop blaming one another of being narrow minded and fallacious and start answering with *EXPLANATIONS* of why a certain point is fallacious. 3. We are going to drop the derogatory attitude and drag our behinds out of the mud. I don't know what about you, but I personally feel like my points drowned in the mud you boys use to wrestle in. Knock it off, already, and - quite frankly - grow up. ~moo

If the word marriage is so holy to you, I don't quite see the difference in using "civil union", "marital contract" or "blipblap" is the term to use for homosexual couples, as long as they get the same legal rights. Hm, hey, I'm getting a deja vu here.. oh.. yes, of course. So it's nice to know we agree. And yet, you're either being naive or ignorant in your position, since you (repeatedly) claim this: Equal rights? Really? So to you, the fact that any man can marry any woman means that homosexual men can marry any woman they want, and that, to you, is equality? Seriously? If this was your meaning then either you don't understand the meaning of equality, or you insist on continuing with - quite silly - word games here to deter from the bigger issue. Saying that the rule applies to everyone and therefore it is "equal" is pretty much like saying that a rule stating that "Any man will be compensated for his lost foreskin with 50,000 dollars" is equality because it refers to *any man* and not just the men who have circumcision. That's not equality, it's picking favorites, and that's - by definition - is not equality. I have stated before (in post #75) that it is not the first time (and will not be the last, probably) that laws are revised or ammended because of social changes. There used to be laws that didn't include blacks - for a very long time, too. When the fact that they were biggoted came to our attention, we changed them. Same applies here - the laws existed for many years: SO WHAT. The situation changed, and revealed flaws in those rules, which should now be changed. Unless, of course, you don't support equality by law, which would lead us to a completely different discussion.

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong here, but technically you would age SLOWER in space because your relative speed is higher. The time issue is not about gravity, it's about velocity... Martin?

Let's not turn this thread into a "How To Moderate Trolls", it has gone far down the drain enough for us to either pick it back up on track or close it down and admit defeat. Choose.

I'm not sure how this thread moved from a cohesive argument about whether or not a government should uphold a definition to .. well, THIS. This argument is way too broad -- some of you argue the definition of the laws whiel others argue the place of the government - those arguments are not necessarily conflicting, but they ARE different arguments. For that matter, I am a relative libertarian when it comes to marriage and sex-related laws. I think it's no one's business, including the government. In that aspect, I might've argued differently in this thread than I did so far. HOWEVER, If we take it in the context of gay couples, then the BOTTOM LINE, is that heterosexual couples receive rights that gay couples DON'T. In that aspect, I am a realistic, and answer the question of whether or not gay couples should enjoy the same rights, which I argued in this thread (pro, if it was unclear). It's very easy to go around and say that definitions don't matter when the person arguing this stance is not affected by these same definitions. Perhaps it's time all of you took a step back and tried putting yourselves in the "minority" shoes, in the shoes of those who *ARE* affected by this definition (whether it was defined during the civil war or during the last election) and then try to see if the definition of the law (that exists and affects civil rights of people) is "relevant" or not. And if you can't do that for fear of your masculinity, then perhaps take the term "homosexuals" and replace it with a hypothetical group, say, "blacks". Or "nerds". Or "people who talk online". Or "men"; and the respective "definition" in the law as whatever it is that would affect that specific group. Then, perhaps, we could continue this debate without resorting to personal implications and irrelevant imaginary scenarios. ~moo

I knewwwww it was a stupid thing I forgot. Bah! Thanks! BTW... that reminds me -- is this also the difference between "echo" and "print" ? and if not, uh, what is the difference? anyone knows?

Yes, I agree, I studied the bible in its original language for 10 years in school through a scholarly/historical view point. I love it, I think it's very interesting and revealing. Do I think it's assisting our understanding of historical events? Sure! Is it interesting as a sociological reference to the life of the time? Absolutely. Does it have messages about "right" and "wrong" of the society who wrote/read it? Yes. Does it have ethical stories? Yes. Do I think all the stories are ethical? Hardly. Does it have realistic representations of physical phenomena? Yes, sure. Does every phenomena it describes is physically accurate? absolutely not. Does it describe our reality accurately? No. If you take the bible as a science book you will be in trouble. If you take it as a story-telling reference, it is an incredibly interesting book. What you do with your own faith is your own personal business, and you should decide it on your own regardless of anyone's opinion. If you *want* to reconcile the bible with your faith in God, however, and you believe God influenced/wrote/described the bible then you will have a problem reading the bible literally. It will either be solved by reading it figuratively and, perhaps, some mental excercises with twisty-logic and assumptions, or, alternatively, you will have to ignore what is currently known about our actual reality and follow a book that has the wrong details. The scientific method says nothing about belief; belief is irrelevant to the scientific method. Belief is personal and should not be mixed with science. In fact, the scientific method was created to make *SURE* that scientists -- who are human, and therefore might (and probably do) have beliefs of their own that might influence their conclusions -- are conducting their experiments in an unbiased manner. The scientific method doesn't define what you should or shouldn't believe in, it defines the methodology in which you are going to get valid results about your reality. Putting personal meaning into them is the realm of philosophy and belief, which you can then do on your own, however you please. There are many religious scientists who seem to work quite well in good science while keeping their religion. Personally, I am not religious, nor do I believe in God, so I can't give you any pointers on that one, but those people exist, and as long as they follow the scientific method regardless of what their personal beliefs are, then their beliefs are irrelevant to the results of their scientific endeavour. But if you TRULY want to reconcile both you will have to muster some courage and keep an intellectual honesty going. The *fact* is that the bible has many things wrong. If you want to claim that this is irrelevant, because the bible is only a representation of what God's "will" is, passing through a (flawed) human perception of the time, sure, go ahead, if it works for you. But reading the bible *literally* - simply, and quite honestly - is a complete antithesis to almost everything we know about our reality and stands against *proven* facts about our universe. It's your choice to pick your goal in this journey, and that will determine if you "fail" or "succeed". Since it's a personal issue, I wouldn't be too quick to make that judgment before even starting on the journey, though. Have some faith in yourself, eh? ~moo

Hey guys, I have a probably-silly question, but it's annoying the crap out of me. I'm reading through a config file that has the construct of: var $lala = "value"; var $lilili = "second value"; I want to read through this file line by line and output it to a second line with different values. It's really not a problem, I'm doing it already, my only problem is that whenever I want to read whether or not there's "$lala", the script seems to treat this as the inner VARIABLE $lala instead of just a text string, and since this isn't a variable in my script it returns null. Same happens when I try to output the string, IE I try to write into the new file a *text* line var $lala = "mynewvalue"; The code, again, thinks this means its supposed to search for $lala and output its *value* instead of just printing out the string as is. what do I do? How do I convince PHP to read and write this as a simple text instead of a variable? Here's the code I'm using: $origFile = "../configuration.php"; $origFileHandle = fopen($origFile, 'r') or die("Can't Open original configuration.php File"); $fullFile = Array(); while (!feof($origFileHandle)) { $line = fgets($origFileHandle); if (strstr($line,"$host = ")) { $line = ' var $host = '.$dbhost; } if (strstr($line,"$user = ")) { $line = ' var $user = '.$Properties[2]['value']; } if (strstr($line,"$db = ")) { $line = ' var $db = '.$Properties[1]['value']; } if (strstr($line,"$password = ")) { $line = ' var $password = '.$Properties[3]['value']; } if (strstr($line,"$sitename = ")>0) { $line = ' var $sitename = '.$Properties[4]['value']; } } fclose($origFileHandle);

That depends on your goal, as always.

The bible is an interesting, sometimes-compelling, grouping of stories. It was written as an educational book gathering dogmatic stories intended on educating the people of its time. If you really intend to "reconcile" the literal reading of the bible with empirical science, you have a lot of complicated mishmashing of facts to do with quite much more than just the two examples you gave in the original post. That said, the bible began its life as a verbal documentation of historical stories that took an "educational" twist to them. Itw as only written on paper on a much much later time (about 60-70 ADE). If you take this under consideration, then you can read the bible in its proper historical context: It has some shreds of historical truth in it that was distilled through hundreds of years of verbal documentation - hence, it lost a lot of its factual value and gained a lot of its mythological value. The interpretations about natural occurences were made by the people of the time. A thorrough (and not so thorrough) reading shows right away that these people's knowledge of the known universe and natural phenomena was (at the very least) extremely limited. If you keep this in mind, then there's little wonder that *some* of those explanations about the phenomena we now know how to explain have some logical sense in the bible. For example: Pork has fatty meat that goes bad quite quickly without proper refrigeration. We know how to explain it today with biology and chemistry and circumvent the "effect" using modern tools (like a refrigerator and, if we must, chemicals to "help" it last longer). In ancient times, however, it was enough to see that the meat goes bad (specifically in an area of a desert like the middle east) and people get sick out of eating it, to result with a proper law stating it is an "Unkosher" / "Forbidden" meat to eat. Picking this specific law to state that the literal bible is true is an ad-hoc fallacy, though. It's also over-simplifying reality, and is like we state that fire is evil because cavemen drew mass-extinctions on their walls due to fire. It also doesn't explain the majority of the bible that is, in fact, just plainly untrue and is completely shredded by the reality we can test. The world is stated to be flat, supported by beams, and that the beams support "the heavens" and "water above the heavens". That is, quite simply, untrue. The bible states quite clearly that the sun revolves around the Earth (completely untrue), and not only that, but also has an account of the sun "stopping in mid air" (if anything, the Earth stopped, but that too is an incredibly silly idea, physically and realistically) during high noon. If you insist on reading the bible literally, you're going to have a lot more problems than just creation vs. evolution and the ten plagues. Much, much more. YT Is right, the ten plagues can be explained naturally - but that too is irrelevant to the literal truth of the bible. It just means that these events were so "strong" in people's minds that the stories survived the verbal story-telling throughout the years. It is also a good example of where reality is somewhat lacking -- there is *absolutely no* evidence showing *any* group of slaves running away / being sent away or even *existing* in Egypt at this time or around that time. But there is a *lot* of archeological (and other) evidence about teh egyptians and their behaviour and custom and history during that time, so the fact there's no record of the "Israelites" (or any other group for that matter) is *extremely* weird, unless, of course, that group did not exist. The problem (and beauty, if you're treating this as literature) of word-of-mouth storytelling is that it's mixing a grain of truth with quite a lot of exaggerated rumors and interpreted mythology. You can research where those stories come from by crossing the stories with what we DO know about our world, but going the other way (reading reality out of the bible, that is) will lead you nowhere. ~moo

BTW, guys, I stopped working out for a WHILLLEEE (tough semester), and the noises stopped. I'm assuming it was the pressure (stronger/tighter muscles) on my joints. If it comes back I'll check with a doctor Thanks for the info, though. Very revealing.

But the words define the rights you receive. If same-sex partners would recieve the same rights as heterosexual couples without the use of the word "Marriage", then I would agree with what you say, but quite frankly, they don't, because the rights are not accompanying the effective lifestyle (living together, sharing a bank acct, etc) but they are accompanying the contract by law, which is defined by the *word* marriage. Should we get rid of that word? Whatever; yes, no, personally think that it doesn't matter. Saying that the word itself matters but there should be no "equivalent" word (that give EQUIVALENT RIGHTS!) for homosexual couples is a bit naive. The bottom line is that they're NOT getting the same rights, just like unmarried heterosexual couples are not getting the same rights as married heterosexual couples. The only difference between these and homosexual couples is that heterosexual couples are given the option to choose whether or not they want the legal rights or not.

If "Marriage" is the ceremonial custom, I'm not sure I want it. If "Marriage" is the social conception, I'm not sure I need it. Call it whatever you will and take it if you want or not, as long as you give me the same rights as the rest of society. Really, I don't see the big deal here.. The government "decided" to give certain privileges to couples who share their lives together. This entire ceremonial weddings that define marriage (or, rather, the more effective [by law] less-ceremonial contract-signing that follows the ceremony [or comes without one]) is just a way of making these agreements to "share your life with someone" official. The government decided it gives certain privileges to such couples. Gay couples already live together, whether people like it or not. They already sleep together, share a bank account and effectively act as a married couple no matter what definition you use for it, or what word you choose to pronounce for it. By stating that these couples are excluded from these rights, the law is, effectively, bigotted. I don't see the problem here - call it whatever the heck you want, that doesn't change the realistic situation of what goes on in this "definition" of married couple. That also shouldn't prevent the homosexual couples that otherwise act married to receive the rights that their heterosexual counterparts receive by *law*. ~moo

Thread moved to Pseudoscience/Speculations. The user is encouraged to read the rules and base his claims on valid science.

Won't that make gay marriage in the (few) approved states recognized federally, seeing as it is NOT against the constitution but rather "against" an "act" (the marriage act thing) ? So is immigration (green card to a partner) possible? I don't get it.. it seems not to be, so.. if what you're saying is right (and it makes sense..) why are the rights in those states relatively limited?

Wait,wait, I'm missing something here... This is a genuine question here, please remember I'm a foreigner so don't take my question as anything but a "huh!?" I really don't quite get it with the states-laws vs. federal law. But.. wait, so, isn't the constitution *federal*? as in, it is for ALL the states..? So if a state has a certain law which is not recognized federally, how would federal rights be given? Federal government does not recognize it, therefore federal rights are not given. For that matter -- if I decide to marry a woman and we move to a state that accepts Gay Marriages, would I get a green card? (Not the last time I checked) Would we get federal-tax reliefs? (Not what I was told..) My information on the above, however, is not supported by evidence, it is supported by hearsay from friends with some experience on the matter. If it is wrong, please refer me to the law so I can show it to them, too.. ~moo

iNow, how is same sex marriage legal if two lesbians who want to get married cannot get married? Even if they sign a common-law contract, half of the legal rights that actual married couples have they do not share. First off, civil union only exists in a handful of states, and is not recognized federally. Unlike marriage. That affects all the federal rights that married couple recieve and civil-union / common-law couples do not get. Another example would be immigration. A heterosexual woman can sponsor her husband to receive a green card. LGBT couples cannot, whether they're recognized as civil-union or not. This is a useful resource to summarize some of those lacking rights: http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/wedding/f/MarriageBenefit.htm And they're taken from here: http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/og97016.pdf as far as I could read. They fact same-sex couples can live together does not mean they can take the next step *LEGALLY* that is allowed to their heterosexual counterparts.

Scrappy, it's the fourth time already that you're nitpicking through arguments and choosing what to answer. I have made points you neglected to address that countermand some of your "counter" points. This isn't the first time, either, and wasn't only done to me. Please stop. We're making points for a reason, and you're not here to lecture; address our points fairly, as we do yours. ~moo

Or how it's called.

I don't see how this is a contradiction -- The definition of "a couple" used to be a heterosexual couple. It is evolving to include same sex couples. By saying it's no one's business I mean that no one should prevent these couples from accepting the same rights their equivalents are getting. We defined a law. We notice that the law excludes a group of our citizens from recieving the same rights as everyone. We ammend the law. That's the way things are done in a demoncratic society, specifically one that's built with a constitution. It's not the only case this is ammended because we notice the law is exclusive. It probably won't be the last. If you refuse to ammend such laws, you exclude a group of citizens knowingly. Al these years you (i mean the "broader" you, not you personally) were doing this unknowingly because this issue wasn't known enough or was not raised to the public consciousness. But now it is, so now you (again, 'broad' you) know, and if you make the decision of NOT ammending the law *DESPITE* the fact you KNOW it's excluding a group of your own citizens, then you are the one who gets into their pants, and you are the one who "cares" about this "business". When I said it's "no one's business" I meant the government. Imagine you had a law stating something like "Working men should receive compensation when they are sick." The law defines nothing about women, because it was (in theory, and not so far-fetched theory at that) created before the idea that a woman is equal to a man was widely spread in our society. Would you deny such ammendment because that's the spirit of the law, or would you recognize that the social consciousness has shifted in a manner that *revealed* a flaw in that law, which requires an ammendment? I would hope it is the latter. And that was my point.

It used to be accustomed that blacks are not citizens, therefore they could not get married properly and did not recieve the rights that went on to heterosexual white couples. There's nowhere in the law that defines skin color, and yet at some point in our history (a bit late, relatively, in American history, but still) the decision was made that blacks are indeed part of the citizenship, and are included in the rights of all citizens. I, for one, don't particularly care about the definition you're using (or, rather, the government is using) to define a couple connected in a "contract". Call it marriage if it's heterosexual, call it booboobaabaa if it's homosexual, call it yakiyaki if it's transgendered. Who the hell cares. But if the government does not consider it illegal (which it does not), then by giving rights to a specific group of citizens without giving the *same rights* to an equivalent group of citizens (equivalent in all but a detail that is not considered illegal by the government), then it is a breach of rights. In terms of marriage, in fact, I am semi-libertarian. I don't think the government should define any rules other than those that touch upon minors (and that is because of problems with abuse, rather than strictly choice of a partner). If a brother and sister wants to be married, it's not the place of the government to oppose them. It's a problem with our education system, perhaps, and they should know the genetic problems accompanying such decision, but the government is not the entity that's supposed to get involved in that. In fact, brothers and sisters who do get married *do* get the rights that marriage allows (taxes, etc) by law. Homosexuality is no one's business. It also exists in nature and is a realistic situation that exists in our society. By choosing to exclude them from our laws, we are consciously descriminating against a group of citizens in this country arbitrarily, choosing who to give those rights and who not to. Equality is equality. There's no such thing as 'semi equality'. ~moo

To each his own.

What do you mean? What limitations are there "universally"? If you mean incest, then the "LGBT Crowd" doesn't oppose those limitations. Lesbian couple cannot marry if they're sisters, just like a heterosexual couple cannot marry if they're siblings.. I don't quite understand what other limitations you refer to? the "LGBT Crowd" is arguing for homosexuals to be given the same rights as heterosexuals. That means that it would be given the same limitations, too, by law. Whether or not those limitations should still hold (for everyone) by law, is a completely different argument. The argument at hand is fairness by law - give everyone the same rights and the same limitations, and treat everyone equally.

Great ideas, guys, but this discussion is starting to sway off the intended course, and seeing as ydoap's visit is over, this thread has outlived its days. Thank you for participating. Thread closed.