Roy Moore, Alabama Chief Idiot back in the news yet again.

So "mind rape" is the technical term for what the religious right has been doing.Interesting.

You are actually unable to see the point I was making? Wow.As for the "religious right" I don't know why objection to gay marriage is limited to us since it was universally unthinkable throughout history up until fairly recently.

Uh, no. He was obviously saying that you are substituting fantasy in place of reality.Since that is what you have defined as mind rape then that is what you are doing.

Yes I see what he's saying but it doesn't compute. The fantasy is clearly in the attempt to treat a homosexual couple as the same as a heterosexual couple, which truly I would think anyone would recognize, and in fact it HAD been recognized universally up until quite recently, as I also said. The fantasy is not mine because there is no dissonance involved in heterosexuals fitting marriage. But you have to overlook cognitive dissonance to outfit homosexuals in the emperor's style clothes to make them fit the institution. Kind of like Cinderella's sisters' feet didn't fit her glass slipper but pretending they did. Charade. Pretense. Fantasy. Dissonance. Distorting of language. Cynical denial. I really think it's obvious and really don't get how others wouldn't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Mind rape is one hell of a loaded term. In searching for equality of sexuality, we are challenging entrenched attitudes, and looking to change them, yes. Just as we have (with some degree of success) done with other searches for equality - racial, women's, religious, disabled. Call it mind rape if you will (though frankly, it's so extreme and exaggerated, that you actually damage your case by using it), but it is the simple challenging of entrenched prejudice. Yes, I'm aware that's what you think is a pre-qualifier to marriage, but what is your view as to what marriage is for ? Clearly not every heterosexual couple who have sex together will be married - so what function does marriage fulfill, to differentiate those couples who are married, from those who aren't ? (I know you'll have guessed my next question, and be aware of a sort of bear trap here, but the question's important and valid).

Of course, they're obviously not the same. I don't think they care about universal recognition. Nobody is going to stop you from believing that their marriages are unnatural or illegitimate.The treatment that they are attempting to get is an equal protection of the legal rights associated with the legal contract of marriage that the state is involved in.That you consider this to be a substitution of a fantasy in place of reality, because it goes against your religious beliefs, is not a sufficient reason to stop or prevent the legal precedings.Since you admit that it won't affect you personally, and faced with the fact that you have no legal dispute (as you admit by stating that you think that the government should just stay out of it), then shouldn't you just stay out of the way and keep your mouth shut? No, you don't. None of them really care about that. They just want that legal stuff that you agree the government should be involved in anyways.As you've admitted, its too late as they already are; so why do you care enough to fight against it?You admit that it won't affect you personally. Faced with the fact that there doesn't have to be a universal treatment of sameness, how else are you going to excuse your behavior?

I only "damage my case" by the term because you all refuse to get the point. I want to call it what it is and what it is deserves an extreme term. There is no cognitive dissonance in the other categories you list, except there is no such thing as "religious equality" -- you've confounded that with religious LIBERTY which is something else entirely, and I don't think equality is the word for society's accommodating the disabled either. Equality under the law is the best I can do to try to bring them all under one umbrella but even that is a stretch. Racial equality, yes, women's equality yes.But I don't want to split too many hairs here. The point I want to make is that there is no dissonance involved, or pretense, or distorting of language, in the social benefits we've extended to all the classes you list. But there IS when you want to make marriage fit homosexuality, in the ways I've been trying to get across. Institutionalized cynicism, emperor's new clothes. fantasy, outrageous denial of reality. A man can't be a "wife" and a woman can't be a "husband" and a woman can't be a "wife" to a woman nor a man a "husband" to a man WITHOUT DOING DAMAGE TO SANITY, REALITY, LANGUAGE AND ORDINARY COMMON SENSE. All because they want to deny their aberrant condition and live a pretense to be something they aren't. You want to create the illusion of normality for people who are NOT normal and do not qualify for marriage. It's an ILLUSION you want to impose on society and make us all pretend it's not, VERY much Emperor's New Clothes. I don't think I've guessed your next question so I guess you'll get me in the trap. What I'd say about this situation is that the reason anybody can even think about such a misfit idea as gay marriage is that marriage in society has been undergoing such distortion already for so long nobody knows what it is any more anyway, so any claim to it is OK. It has no meaning any more. But marriage is for uniting heterosexuals in a permanent bond that sets them apart as a unit unto themselves, because of their obvious physiological fit as I keep calling it, which has procreative potential, which homosexuality does not. It's an OBJECTIVE matter, it's not primarily about FEELINGS, it's about the meaning of the procreative combination of the two sexes. Homosexuals do not have that potential and it's a charade to put them in the roles that are defined by it. Pretense, fantasy role playing. Ego-driven playacting. And you want society to pretend along with them, you're even happy to force it on us and punish us for noticing it's a pretense. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You don't have to redefine a universal institution and mangle words to create an illusion if all you want to do is confer certain practical benefits on a contractual arrangement between people, but you are wrong, that is NOT what they want, they want the illusion of marriage.

I think you've misunderstood me. What I was asking is what you think marriage is for, as between heterosexual couples.

You're right, you don't have to. But it is a way. You can't know that because you are not one of them.Go ahead and ask them if they care about the things that I said that they didn't, and instead if they really care about the things that I said that they did.I think they'll tell you that I'm right and you're wrong.

It's for creating a covenanted permanent (potentially) procreative social unit. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Destroying the meaning of marriage is a drastic solution to cram down the throats of people who object to it if all you want is practical covenantal benefits that can be arranged many other ways.

Ok, that's what it does, but I'm after the why. Its purpose. What benefits it brings. (After all, we're perfectly capable, as a race, of forming permanent bonds and procreating without marriage).

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You don't have to redefine a universal institution and mangle words to create an illusion if all you want to do is confer certain practical benefits on a contractual arrangement between people, but you are wrong, that is NOT what they want, they want the illusion of marriage.

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Minus all the emotive and misleading language - and ignoring the fact that most of the "redefinition" has already occurred for heterosexual marriages anyway - I'm afraid that isn't true.It IS necessary to grant the secular, legal status of marriage to homosexual couples to grant them the legal benefits of marriage, because otherwise people like you will try to use the difference in status to take those benefits away. An example from 2011

I'm afraid my frame of reference is too biblical for you and I don't really see why I should have to offer it. But any other attempt to define the benefits would be to my mind just the usual speculative mental conjuring that people do in such sociological efforts. The biblical purpose of marriage is to make "one flesh" of a man and a woman, their children, if any, being literally the expression of that one flesh.But I'm sure you mean social benefits and one would certainly be the protection of women, which would have been more necessary in earlier times, though up until fairly recently. And stability and security for the raising of children. That one's rather a joke in our age of easy divorce but in a society where marriage is valued and enforced as a standard that could be said of it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.