When I said "no one argues that", I should have said, "no lawyer argues that." Tradition goes to the question of whether same-sex marriage is a fundamental right, but George's phrasing is that people are arguing that while same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right, it should still be stopped because of tradition.
To use a different example, suppose the Cal. Sup. Ct. decided tomorrow that the Cal. Constitution secures a fundamental human right to frosty chocolate milkshakes. It would be wrong to say that opponents of this decision were horrible people opposed to fundamental human rights. The opponents simply don't believe that there is such a fundamental human right.
The same thing's going on here--there are a number of reasons that opponents of judicially created gay marriage rights believe that there isn't such a right, one of them being the tradition that marriage is designed around procreation and has never applied to marriage between a man and a woman (this is valid but probably the weakest argument for the proposition.) But it is arguing in bad faith to say that opponents of gay marriage are opposed to basic human rights, just like it would be arguing in bad faith to say that opponents of free frosty chocolate milkshakes are opposed to basic human rights.
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Date: 2008-05-15 09:16 pm (UTC)To use a different example, suppose the Cal. Sup. Ct. decided tomorrow that the Cal. Constitution secures a fundamental human right to frosty chocolate milkshakes. It would be wrong to say that opponents of this decision were horrible people opposed to fundamental human rights. The opponents simply don't believe that there is such a fundamental human right.
The same thing's going on here--there are a number of reasons that opponents of judicially created gay marriage rights believe that there isn't such a right, one of them being the tradition that marriage is designed around procreation and has never applied to marriage between a man and a woman (this is valid but probably the weakest argument for the proposition.) But it is arguing in bad faith to say that opponents of gay marriage are opposed to basic human rights, just like it would be arguing in bad faith to say that opponents of free frosty chocolate milkshakes are opposed to basic human rights.