I think so too, Einherjar. I think it pretty much condenses the one argument the opponents of gay marriage have not been able to rebut, in just the one sentence.
Foxfyre wrote:Yes that was racist. But comparing race and gender are comparing apples and oranges.
People of ALL races, ethnic or socio-economic groups are included in the current marriage laws. the distinction of the laws are based on gender and being of legal age and on no other criteria. And there is no discrimination between men and women in this case as the law applies equally to each.
Of course there is no discrimination between men and women - noone ever asserted there was. There's a discrimination between straight people and gay people. (If this sounds like a 'duh' moment it's because it is.)
A law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation may be perfectly non-discriminatory on any other count - because those counts are not the ones it targets. That doesn't make it any better. Compare: the ban on interracial marriage was exemplary in the ways it did not discriminate between men and women, or between people of different socio-economic backgrounds, or between people of different sexual orientations. None of them were allowed to marry someone of another race - all of them were allowed to marry someone of their own race. That didn't make it any better, or any less discriminatory.
In fact, this is where Einherjars point kicks in. Your reply to his parallel is no reply. First, you assert that discriminating on the basis of sexuality (which is what a ban on gay marriage is - straight people can marry their partner, gays can't) is simply
different from doing so on the basis of race - it's "apples and oranges". But you do not argue
why the one thing should be so essentially different from the other, or what the justification for the difference would be.
You say that the current ban on gay marriage is not discriminatory because it applies to all "races, ethnic or socio-economic groups". But of course, with that kind of logic one could equally argue that the old ban on interracial marriage was non-discriminatory because it applied to people "of all sexual orientations, ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds". Again, the "duh" moment - the discrimination, of course, concerned the count the law set out to discriminate on. Back then, race. Now, sexual orientation. You fail to argue why one thing is OK when the other obviously wasn't.