@parados,
Dear parados,
In reply to your post of 6/21/10:
(Jack:) "My vote would be to permit homosexuals to marry, which they already can and do, by means of their preferred procedure as long as others aren't obliged to approve of such marriages."
(parados:) "All I can say is that statement contradicts itself completely."
Quote:"Do you not think that recognition of marriage by society is approval?"
Yes, I do. (affirmation)
Quote:"If you don't think that your argument is moot and there is no reason to not let them marry as heterosexuals do using the same procedure under the law."
I find that a bit jumbled because of your grammar.
Quote:"Either recognition by society is approval which gives a basis for your argument or recognition by society is not approval and your argument against homosexual marriage fails."
That's better gammatically, but where did I deny that recognition of marriage by society is approval?
(parados:) "Several questions have been asked of you but you haven't answered."
(Jack:) Please pick out and give me the --one-- most pertinent of the questions you believe I have failed to answer.
(parados:) "Others have pointed those out repeatedly."
No no, parados. That's starting to turn into a ploy. Point out specifically a --any one-- question of yours that you're claiming that I've avoided.
But before dealing with that and the other points in your post, and to make progress in this matter, I think that I'm going to have to bring over to our exchange the details of the method for resolving this controversy that I've suggested to others involved in this thread. As things stand now, I'm not sure what you believe errors are and, perhaps more specifically, how they can be detected.
Here they are:
1. First, we both admit that we can be mistaken; that we may be involved in an error.
2. The exchange is to be cooperative. We each have the right to pose questions to the other with the expectation that an answer will be forthcoming. And, if the question takes a "yes" or "no" answer, it will be given or an explanation of why it can't be answered with a "yes" or "no" will be given. No evasiveness. I might point out that this avoidance of giving a "yes"/"no" answer and instead getting into detailed obliquities and tangentialities is almost a standard procedure. In fact the avoidance of "yes" or "no" answers, resulting in confusion and inconclusiveness, is probably the chief obstacle to making progress in arriving at a solution to this controversy. .
3. Since there must --and I emphasize must-- be an error in contradictory propositions, we must have test-criteria for identifying it (or them). To get away from subjectivity, and in the interest of simplicity, I suggest that we limit those test-criteria to fallacies and contradictions, nothing more. In other words, neither you nor I will be accused of being involved in an error unless it be a fallacy or a contradiction. And, regarding fallacies, the word is all too frequently used loosely. Fallacies have names. If the accusation of being guilty of using a fallacy is made, a) the name of the fallacy and b) how it is being applied will be given. Otherwise the only test-criterion of error will be contradictions.
4. Errors are to be sought on both sides of the issue. Progress will consist in seeking, identifying, agreeing on and discarding them. They will not be left inconclusive to clog up the exchange
5. There will be no unilateral control of the discussion, something that, sooner or later, Gay Liberation ideologues seek. There will be no trying to dictate what points will or will not be discussed.
6. If there is a disagreement as to how the matter should be approached, we divide the discussion into two, separate approaches gone into concurrently and, using those differing approaches, try to identify errors. There will be no attempt at unilaterally controling approaches for the purpose of prohibiting the use of any approach unless that approach can be shown to involve the one using it in a fallacy or contradiction.
The reason for getting into the above in such detail is that it has been my experience that those points seem to come up inevitably after one has spent quite a bit of time going over the matter. When there is really no agreed-on method for resolving the controversy one then finds that what one is involved in, as mentioned above, is a quarrel rather than a pro/con argument in search of a resolving truth.
Can we agree on the above? Are any changes needed?
Regards,
Jack