I didn't respond becuase I essentially agree with you regarding all of this... :2razz:
bff
Except the part that if two genders are being discriminated against that this somehow magically negates Discrimination. If people are being banned from something based on gender or sexual orientation, then it doesn't matter if it is one or two genders, this is ridiculous. That is why the Mexican analogy does work. If a Mexican discriminates against all races, then he is Discriminating all races. A law set up to stop all same sex marriages in Discriminating against both genders for the reasons of disallowing same sex marriages due to their sexual orientation. It is Discriminating against me even, a hetero, for I am denied the right to marry a man if I chose to do so. This is illogical and there is no logical reason for such Discrimination.
if he "discriminates" against people of all races including his own then it's meaningless to call him racist or to imply that his hatred is based on race at all.
if smoking becomes illegal for men and also for women, the government is not discriminating based on gender, though both genders are affected.
if two genders are being discriminated against instead of one, it does not necessarily negate all discrimination but it negates the idea of gender discrimination.
abuse is not Discrimination unless it is based on a characteristic shared by those being mistreated, such as gender, age or skin color. for example, it can be argued that females are discriminated against in the workplace and males are discriminated against in custody battles, because in both cases one gender is given deferential treatment. if in the case of gay marriage neither males nor females are receiving worse treatment than the other as a gender group, gender is not the common characteristic you are looking for.
it is more likely to be orientation: that is, a person's preference for either his own gender or the opposite. I think before we were having issues with the definition of orientation. you were using it to mean "the gender a person is attracted to" and I was using it to mean "a person's preference for his own gender or the opposite," so that practically our definitions would translate, respectively, to "his orientation is for males" or "his orientation is homosexual."
in this way I could very well say that everyone affected by gay marriage laws has the same orientation (homosexual), but you would disagree, saying that half of them are attracted to men (gay) and half to women (lesbians).
with my definition, you could argue that orientation discrimination is taking place, in that the government is abusing homosexuals (and only homosexuals), while heterosexuals are shown deferential treatment.
I would then rebut, any adult may enter into a marriage contract if he meets the terms, and his orientation is never asked for or even taken into consideration. that would leave us right back where we started, arguing about the government's role and purpose in marriage, but blissfully free of all rhetoric like "discrimination," "bigotry," etc., which are distracting and unhelpful.