Pangloss

I agree with iNow, and think that the socialism label is bandied about in error by the right. I wouldn't want to live under a pure socialism, a marxist government, or many other far-left forms, but then I wuoldn't want to live in an unregulated society or even a contract-enforcement-only society like the Ayn Rand Objectivists either. I believe in a system that combines a relatively free market with checks and balances that hold excesses in abeyance. In short, exactly what we have. The sliding back and forth of the exact line never concerns me to the extent that I feel we're "sliding into socialism" or "sliding into capitalism". (But I don't know if we've addressed IA's question very well.)

I'm asking why a separate name is the only way to achieve equality. You're using a premise that the same name is the only way to achieve equality, and requiring that evidence be provided to the contrary, and then leveraging that to accuse those who don't want the same name of also not wanting equality (or as you put it "giving the appearance"). As the lawyers like to say, it's boostrapping. Put another way, even if this thread shows that there are no "relevant secular reasons to oppose gay marriage", it will not have shown that opponents can only logically conclude that they must stop opposing gay marriage.

My reaction to his remark is that he got caught up in the moment and that the problem is systemic to current GOP tactics and leadership, and not really a "Joe Wilson" thing. He blew it, but the atmosphere they've fostered lead to the outburst and that's the real source of the problem. You can hear this in the video below, because before his outburst ALL the GOP members were reacting verbally to the President's points (just not as rudely, perhaps, although I'm not convinced Wilson is the first one to use the word "lie"). The outburst occurs around the 1.5 minute mark, but start listening at around 1:10 mark. It sounds to me like Wilson or someone else also says "you lie" at around 1:20, it just didn't get as noticed by the room, and in that case it comes right in the middle of a group outburst. TxHKSHvMRWE In all fairness the Dems were verbalizing as well, obviously in support. And Obama says Wilson was sincere in his apology and that's good enough for me in terms of Wilson -- fine, let's leave this specific outburst behind. But it does seem to indicate how wide the aisle is these days. It's notable that Wilson's local challenger racked up half a million dollars from 14,000 donors within a day of making that remark. (source)

True. But do we try to solve inequities that are perceived, or psychological, and not real in a legal sense? I'm not saying the laws are presently unequal -- clearly they are. I'm asking why that problem can only be solved by widening the definition of "marriage". Is Saryctos actually arguing that they shouldn't have equal treatment under the law because they can't bear children, or is he arguing that they should call it something different, with equal legal status, based on the child-bearing issue? This is really his argument and you should stick with him on it, but it doesn't seem to me that he's arguing for inequality. This debate seems to have broken down into two groups: Group A: People who think it should be called "marriage". Group B: People who think it should be called "a civil union". Both groups seem to agree that it should be equal under law. There doesn't seem to be a Group C that wants gays and lesbians to have an option that is inferior to marriage. Even worse, I think there is a tendency by Group A to imply that Group B does not want equality. The entire premise of this thread is that if no "relevant secular reason" can be found to support separate names, then separate names is not equality. But a purely logical connection between those two things has never been established. The point of this thread seems to be finding a way to tell Group B that they're not being logical, when in fact Group A is not being purely logical either.

Yes that's true. Unfortunately even if health care reform does everything hoped-for, it can't do it before the 2010 mid-term election, or even the 2012 presidential election. Which means that those vote will take place based on perceptions of what the health care plan might be accomplishing, rather than the reality we'll see years down the line. Not that that will stop either side from declaring it both a radical success and a miserable failure. Success in other areas might have more impact, however. Usually it comes down to the economy and small-scale daily impact.

I think Saryctos made a valid point prior to bringing up the children aspect. "Tradition", in a word, is a valid, secular, relevant reason to oppose calling gay unions "marriage", assuming they are legally equal. This debate in favor of "gay marriage" of a fully-legally-equal "civil union" may ultimately be moot, because the underlying premise of it is protecting a group of people from an offensive legal distinction that would not actually exist. If it's equal, it shouldn't matter, at least on a purely logical level -- we're talking about emotions and perceptions, here. We're proposing calling it "marriage" so as not to offend the recipients; so we don't make them feel like second class citizens. But in the process another group is offended. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Which of course is where the argument to remove marriage completely and have everything just be civil unions comes in. But I don't feel compelled to teach either group a lesson. Given the economic times, how about we have the state do whatever is least expensive? Of course, as Mooey says the better question is whether gays and lesbians should HAVE equal rights. But I don't know that calling it marriage, all other things being equal, makes any difference. The only reason I support calling it marriage is that it makes sense to me to pick one group over the other -- let the right wing be offended, and call it a day. An even better question might be to ask whether we CAN have a fully-equal entity called "civil union". Bear in mind that it would require a law stating that private companies cannot provide benefits to married couples that it does not also provide to civil union couples. Anything short of that would leave the situation unequal. But even then it's still a valid question to ask, because there may be ways around that sort of law, or rights of some kind that would not fall under the purview of this approach. If it's not possible to address all of the discrepencies, then we can't call it a civil union -- it has to be a marriage, or it's discrimination.

I think I read somewhere that Grand Theft Auto IV had a team of 1,000 programmers who worked for 5 years on that project. Which sounds like a lot until you hear that it's made something like two billion dollars in sales. I teach programming in a Game Design program at a small local university, and one of the challenges is the fact that it's very hard to squeeze in the building of a complete game inside of a 10-week quarter. We've tackled that a number of ways, including team work, special-topics "project" courses and extracurricular game-building activities. Our game design lab features high-def equipment and 64-bit multiprocessor workstations networked to an XBox 360, and we use C# and XNA studio because it allows us to use rapid application development methods, which allow for the illustration of all parts of the game design pipeline. RAD also allows us to build complete (if simple) games in a single quarter. One of the challenges of this approach is that early on it lulls the programming students into a false sense of what programming is about (all those wizards and shortcuts). We have to correct that later when they take the "serious" programming courses. On the other hand, it draws more students into the program who might otherwise have seen programming as something they couldn't do ("look how easy it is to program!"). This is a good thing, because this country needs not only more programmers, but more network administrators, consultants, etc, with a solid understanding of what programming is about. Since presumably some of my students will be forced to find work in the larger IT industry instead of the gaming industry, this works out well. All of that having been said, the programmers we crank out aren't equipped to write the kind of hard-core coding that drives the most innovative games; the major $60 console releases. They do get a solid core of OOP principles, and they can knock out indie games for the XBox 360 or iPhone. But they need more programming experience and more academic knowledge in order to really get to the level of a typical graduate from a traditional "computer science" program. But that's how the industry has played out in recent years. There's "programming", and then there's programming.

Here's one from Ronald Kessler's new book, "In the President's Secret Service", which was just published last month: "We were in the elevator going up to the residence on the second floor of the White House," says former agent Ted Hresko. "The door of the elevator was about to close, and one of the staffers blocked it. The staffer told Reagan the news about Donna Rice and Gary hart." Reagan nodded his head and looked at the agent. "Boys will be boys," he said. When the door of the elevator shut, Reagan said to Hresko, "But boys will not be president."

Yup! I agree with you (and him). I am not entirely convinced that there are no rational arguments, but I do think there's a strong argument that most opponents who are also normally very reasonable people just haven't fully thought this through. iNow included an exception for this in his original post, using the word "ignorance", which is a word that has some negative connotations to it, but it seems accurate to me. Ignorance isn't necessarily a bad thing, as we all start somewhere. That was nicely put. I think one reason I'm somewhat reluctant to accept that there are no possible well-reasoned objections is that my wife is opposed on the grounds of tradition/naming (she would see it called something other than marriage). But she's no bigot and many of her friends are gay or lesbian; some where guests at our wedding and we had a priest from an alternate-Catholic church that serves the gay and lesbian community. Many of her friends know her position and respect it, even though they disagree. Not that she talks about politics much, that being more of her husband's thing. (grin) So basically: Smart girl, college degrees, CPA, rejects religion and the religious right, cares about the world, etc, but here she is taking the position that it should be called something other than marriage. And I know a lot of moderate conservatives (and liberals) who hold that position, so like I say I'm somewhat reluctant to cast aspersions. On the other hand, I've also seen some of them 'come around' on this and other issues over time, and I think this comes back to the question of how you convince people to change their minds, with a carrot or a stick. The reason we no longer have segregation in this country isn't Kent State and Malcom X, it's Selma and Dr. King. Winning hearts and minds is a gradual (and frustrating) process. Anyway, nice post.

Posts 1 and 9. I decided to interpret iNow's position as an opinion strenuously made rather than dwell on semantics. Mr. Skeptic's reply is not a straw man, but IMO it is nit-picking; I agree with iNow that we should move forward rather than splitting hairs on who needs to prove what.

This is not the case.

Moontanaman, let's try and keep things civil please. Thank you.

Please refer to posts 23 and 24, bearing in mind swansont's comment in post #18:

I see. What evidence supports this fact? How do we know that all opponents to gay marriage are bigots or homophobes?

I agree. So then it seems we are in agreement that disagreement is not bullying, and can be provoked, but bullying behavior sometimes still occurs.

iNow, regarding your statement in the first post of this thread, that anyone who espouses a position against gay marriage is a homophobe or bigot, is that a statement of objective fact, or an opinion?

Sure, but I think you already know the answer. You've issued infractions for sarcasm and rudeness. Obviously they were being sarcastic or rude for a reason. In short, I don't feel that we have a community that supports bullying. I do feel that we have to remain vigilant on that issue. Let me see if I can expand on that. Here are some general categories of ostracizing/bullying, as I see it: Rudeness Sarcasm Ridicule Stating that nobody here agrees with the poster Leaping to conclusions about a poster's underlying motivations (e.g. determining that an opponent to gay marriage is also a homophobe) Last-wording In addition, as a general rule we don't delete posts, which means that those comments, that sarcasm or rudeness that we've issued an infraction for, were generally left in place, and often (usually?) without comment from a moderator. So from an outside perspective, and also from the perspective of the bullied member, it appears that they have been bullied, and nothing was done about it. In effect, the bullying was successful, and the member has been ostracized for their opinion. However, when we instead issued a rebuke in the thread indicating that such behavior was not acceptable and should cease, and/or if the offending (bullying) comment was deleted, in my opinion the attacked member was more likely not to feel bullied. So we know how to avoid and/or reduce bullying/ostracizing behavior, and we've sometimes even put that into practice. (I've seen you do these things as well.) I believe this has an impact on the community as a whole. People see what's tolerated and what's not, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. When we show that we won't tolerate rude behavior, people understand why and change their behavior. When we don't show it, the atmosphere moves toward one that is tolerant of bullying behavior. This is a pretty straightforward equation, and it's one that literally thousands of Web forums have dealt with. In most cases they ignore the problem, and the inevitable result is that the forum becomes dominated by its most active members, and those will generally form a generally accepted set of opinions, and any dissent is bullied into submission (or dissenters become pet opponents, who return mainly to stir up trouble, which is equally worthless). There are many liberals-only and conservatives-only forums around the Web. Ones that openly support the posting of both sides? Not so much - because it's a struggle. I believe that it's not only important to tolerate opinions, but is also consistent with our purpose of using and promoting science and reason. I agree with you -- disagreement is not bullying. And this is not a place for soapboxing. It's not a place for soapboxing by members who oppose gay marriage because all gays are aliens with tentacles and purple skin, but it's also not a place for soapboxing by members who feel that anybody who opposes gay marriage is a homophobe. Disagreement is to be protected and preserved, and that's a two-way street. We do a great job at dealing with unpopular opinions that are scientifically unfounded. We don't do as well when it comes to popular opinions with a weak or interpretable scientific basis. There it sometimes becomes a struggle, with people taking sides and everyone trying really hard not to produce a situation where we end up wielding the ban stick over an opinion, but at the same time ensure that inaccurate assertions are appropriately and politely refuted. But it can sometimes be a tough call, so it shouldn't be a surprise that some of us feel that we've sometimes failed. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedDiscussion about gay marriage moved into a new thread here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43986

That's interesting. Is there any research on how many characters are typically known to Chinese-speaking people, at various levels of education? Like, and I don't know anything about this, but for example a typical 5 year old might know a dozen, a 15 year old might know 40, and a typical PhD candidate might know 100? Or does it even work that way?

That wasn't my intention, but I guess I understand where you're coming from. I felt the same way after I read post #3. Even though you left out my name out of that quote I still felt obligated to respond. I'm sure you felt the same way when I posted your quotes above, even though I was trying to address a larger issue, just as I'm sure you were. I should have made my point without the quotes. I apologize for that. We don't seem to be doing to well at establishing moral high ground over one another and I think Mooey is pretty angry with us. Wanna fight some more or call a truce? Let's see if we can find some common ground:

I didn't say that challenging premises and assertions, checking them for accuracy and validity are counter to our purpose (in fact I explicitly said the opposite). I don't even have a problem with requiring posters to recognize when a factual assertion was made in error. I have a problem with requiring people to "adjust their views". I have a problem with members being told that their opinions "lack integrity". I have a problem with ostracizing and ridiculing people for their opinions. I have a problem with sarcastic asides and smirks and browbeating and bullying. And I have a problem with people who feel that those tactics benefit this community, instead of harming it. And I wonder if and when somebody who supports that point of view will have enough courage and respect for this community to step forward and openly state why they feel that that's a better direction for this community to go. Perhaps this thread offers such an opportunity.

Really? Where on SFN are ostracization and ridicule encouraged? I admit I am not familiar with that section.

I want to follow up on my point to swansont, and also to respond to some of Mooeypoo's excellent points in posts 3 & 8. Some have expressed at various times in the past that they feel that opinions, especially with regard to political matters, are not an appropriate subject for this forum. IMO the main impetus for that position is the drama associated with opinion-posting. It's emo. It's hot. It's uncomfortable when people are arguing with one another. It sometimes leads to hurt feelings and lost friendships. It has lead to departures including long-standing members and hard-working staff. But I feel that the tolerance of, and encouragement of, opinions is vital to this community. It brings in new members. It encourages understanding. It serves motivation. As swansont says, we're not entitled to our own facts. But the facts only get us so far. Especially with regard to subjects where there are so many variables and so much uncertainty that the facts can never be fully understood. Opinion might even be said to be a necessary part of the scientific process, helping us to consider the ramifications of that data and what we should do about it. swansont is probably better at handling this than anyone I've ever seen (on ANY forum), and should serve as a role model for all our members, including myself. He knows how to respond on point, to restrict challenges to the facts, and to respect differences of opinion without supporting ridiculous views. So I think the problem lies more in the emotion that opinions can sometimes generate. And do that end we should continue to be careful about how we handle opinions at SFN. Here are some examples that I believe undermine our purpose here: A person does not need to be denounced in order to refute their factual claims. Challenge the facts, not the person. And requiring someone to change their mind is never, ever a good policy, in my view. Opinions are like *** holes -- everyone has one, and most of them stink. But what would you do without one? My two bits, anyway. You're all welcome to disagree. IMO that's what makes it interesting.

Absolutely. Note that that argument is predicated on the premise that the person, as you say, is making the argument that lunar exploration be carried out because of that growth. If you make the case that the beans aren't growing there, that argument has indeed been "shot down". But that doesn't mean that their opinion in favor of lunar exploration is no longer valid, that they've been exposed as a fool or less-intelligent person, or that it is appropriate and necessary to ostracize that person in front of this community. Not that you proposed such, but such is often what happens in this forum. In fact sometimes the ridicule substitutes for the refutation. It wasn't an assertion, it was a statement of opinion, because it was predicated by the phrase "from what I've seen", and you were wrong and inappropriate to call it out as a statement of fact and challenge it on that basis. An appropriate response came from another member the next day who simply asked if that opinion could be supported. Challenging people's opinions as if they were making factual statements, and then claiming that because they've been unable to support their opinions that their opinions no longer "stand" and that other people's opinions are more valid, is wrong and detrimental to this community.

Well it's going to be hard to top IA, but how about some words we'd like politicians to be able to use but they don't seem capable of understanding, much less using coherently in a sentence? I just picked a few "sciencey" words at random from our own thread subject listings and plugged them in with the following results: - "macromolecules" - 2 uses from late 2002, undocumented - "lysozyme" - 0 uses - "subatomic" -- 1 use in 2008, 6 uses overall, all from one Democratic representative from California's 14th, which includes Silicon Valley - "hydroxide" -- 6 uses in the last couple of years! Ah, but all from Bob Casey of PA, who sits on the alternative energy committee - "electrolysis" -- Interesting... apparently a popular word used by Senator Larry Craig, known mainly as "the senator who got caught with another man in a bathroom stall". Kinda makes you wonder, don't it? Or maybe not.