Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Blog Etiquette and the Definition of Marriage
I got an email from an old acquaintance inviting me to check out her blog because she wrote something she felt was important. Basically, she was arguing that traditional marriage is and has been the foundation for any stable society since the beginning of time, and we should choose to restrict marriage to traditional relationships. She began by talking about the definition of the word and I thought I could strengthen her position. I posted a comment that said something like "yes, if you change the definition of the word, the word may lose its value ... ethics aside, a traditional relationship has greater value than an (alternative) because it has the potential to bring new life to the world ... including other types of relationships under the umbrella of marriage would be like, for instance, changing the word 'square' to include rectangles, the word 'square' loses an important part of its meaning." I checked back to see whether anyone had responded to my comment because I was so proud of it, but it turns out she didn't allow my comment. Excuse me? You allow other people to post stuff like "Wow, great idea, you're so cool" but you screen out a new idea? Whatever, see if I read your blog again. Was my comment offensive? Does it make sense? Maybe she didn't want to open up a can of worms.
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3 comments:
so is plural marriage, as practiced by much of the world "since the beginning of time" considered under the definition of a "traditional" marriage?
I suppose she overlooked the fact that many polygamist societies have lasted for centuries. I think her goal was to argue that recognition of homosexual relationships by the state is wrong. With polygamist relationships, most Westerners would not consider those traditional, and the prosperity of societies recognizing such relationships is a good counterargument. That's not to say that I support any other definition of marriage.
In a lot of countries there are arranged marriages, too. Those are "traditional" where they come from. And I think that was rude of that person not to allow your comment. You may have weird things to say sometimes, but you deserve to be heard!
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