{"id":47107,"date":"2014-09-15T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=47107"},"modified":"2014-09-15T12:12:54","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T17:12:54","slug":"noh8-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=47107","title":{"rendered":"NoH8!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When gay marriage activists sold the idea of same-sex marriage, their key points (other than the &#8220;if you disagree you are teh bigot!&#8221; that most of the lower-information supporters prattled endlessly)\u00a0were:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The idea that marriage is purely about raising children is obsolete &#8211; people who don&#8217;t intend to, or can&#8217;t, have children, are married all the time, even in churches.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>With the idea of procreation left out of the equation, why, really, shouldn&#8217;t two people who love each other be able to be married?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This, of course, introduced some new questions; if, indeed, &#8220;love&#8221; is the basis for marriage, why can&#8217;t three or more people <em>love<\/em> each other enough to get married, by that same token?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There was one other case I&#8217;ve been wondering about for the past few years; what kind of &#8220;love&#8221; do we mean, here?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Who Wrote The Book Of Love?<\/strong>:\u00a0 There are different kinds of love; the Bible\u00a0breaks &#8220;love&#8221; down into three categories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Eros&#8221; &#8211; physical attraction<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Philos&#8221; &#8211; &#8220;brotherly&#8221; love, or deep friendship<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Agape&#8221; (pronounced:\u00a0 &#8220;ogg-OPP-ay&#8221;):\u00a0 unconditional love &#8211; usually associated with divinity, sometimes also of the &#8220;Greater love hath nobody that they lay down their life&#8230;&#8221; variety.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Vapours<\/strong>:\u00a0 With that in mind, <a href=\"http:\/\/m.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/news\/article.cfm?c_id=1&amp;objectid=11322617\">gay groups in New Zealand are up in arms <\/a>over a couple of guys &#8211; Travis McIntosh and Matt McCormick, who happen to be\u00a0longtime utterly heterosexual pals &#8211; who got married as part of a radio station promotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They are not amused:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0Otago University Students&#8217; Association Queer Support co-ordinator Neill Ballantyne, of Dunedin, said the wedding was an&#8221;insult&#8221; because marriage equality was a&#8221;hard fought&#8221; battle for gay people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Something like this trivialises what we fought for.&#8221; The competition promoted the marriage of two men as something negative,&#8221;as something outrageous that you&#8217;d never consider&#8221;, Mr Ballantyne said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>LegaliseLove Aotearoa Wellington co-chairman Joseph Habgood said the competition attacked the legitimacy of same-sex marriages.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The point of this competition is that men marrying each other is still something they think is worth having a laugh at &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Both of these gentlemen bring up two responses:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yuk It Up:\u00a0 <\/strong>In a free society, marriage &#8211; no matter who is doing it &#8211; is <em>always <\/em>worth having a laugh at.\u00a0 There is no right not to be offended.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>More seriously?:\u00a0<\/strong> Mr. Habgood&#8217;s organization&#8217;s name, &#8220;LegalizeLove&#8221;, should give you a hint here.<\/p>\n<p>Gay activists convinced a plurality of representatives that &#8220;marriageable love&#8221; didn&#8217;t just involve people who practiced &#8220;Eros&#8221; in the heteronormative manner.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So why must marriageable love include &#8220;Eros&#8221; (to say nothing of &#8220;Eros&#8221; between just two people)\u00a0at all?\u00a0 By the standard we&#8217;ve been convinced\/forced to accept, all love is equal.\u00a0 Why not &#8220;Philos?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(And if the &#8220;Deep brotherly love&#8221; is only &#8220;love of Rugby&#8221;, as indeed seems to be the case?\u00a0 Love is love, dammit!)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cue The Outrage Industry<\/strong>:\u00a0 Perhaps it&#8217;s time for &#8220;Philos&#8221; activists to take to the streets to fight for Pal Marriage.\u00a0 To combat the &#8220;Homonormative&#8221; hatred that is denying rights to other people whose love for each other is no less valid than that of any gay couple.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>NoH8!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When gay marriage activists sold the idea of same-sex marriage, their key points (other than the &#8220;if you disagree you are teh bigot!&#8221; that most of the lower-information supporters prattled endlessly)\u00a0were: The idea that marriage is purely about raising children is obsolete &#8211; people who don&#8217;t intend to, or can&#8217;t, have children, are married all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-family-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47107"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47201,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47107\/revisions\/47201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}