h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>but the way that it might is by eroding those social and anthropological boundaries.

Again...a pithier way of saying what I was wittering about. Start to erode all those things and we start to question who should get all the money.

makes you really want to ask then

top trumps,

which is the better marriage?

the partnership of a man and a woman unrelated to each other that chooses that not to have children

or the partnership between brother and sister choose too be parents with each other

you know just out of interest?

casually asking Hoo at post 78

Well.. The proof of the pudding I suppose..

But there is a common confusion between a "marriage ceremony or wedding, often referred to as "getting married", and actual marriage..

A wedding is a social, public, legal, and , for some, religious commitment, to embark upon a process of "marrying together" two people for life, making one living entity out of two within a social and communal context.

Much that has happened over the last couple of hundred years has "harmed" traditional ways of accomplishing this, and yet marrying is still an endeavour that some people seem to wish to embark upon.. After 44 years ours is still very much "work in progress"- or perhaps not.

I wrote a song for a friend's wedding which included the lines: "Those whom God has joined let no man tear apart. But it's not in Church that you must be joined but in the heart."

Cass

What worries me more than Gay Marriage is having taught so many pupils who are having to grow up with all the insecurities and uncertainties of being the product of parents who apparently could not inspire the kind of Love and Commitment that has been associated with marriage.. And/or whose mutual Love for them is not strong enough to find ways to make family life work.

Of course the last two hundred years of Western History has done a great deal to damage family and social life: but so many children and young people are prematurely asked to be "grown up" about the disintegration of their childhood world and too many are ready-made victims of the mass-media consumerist culture and/or youth/gang cultures with no real strong roots and roll-models in those who have "Natured" and should be trying to "Nurture" them.

Many will end up looking for affection wherever they can find it, hence the grooming case in the News today.

Cass

Why does gay marriage worry you Casseroleon?

oh god, top trumps, I am sorry for my verbals yesterday, been sketchy, getting a grip, sorry

Cass I think that parents commitment to their children is far more important than their commitment to each other.

On a side note, "till death us do part" often only meant a few years when life expectancy was 40 or so and 5% of confinements resulted in the death of the mother.

I'm reading Trollope at the moment and the newly married 20 year old Glencora Palliser says unselfconsciously "... if I live ...."

The situations that David Copperfield, the orphans of Lowood and Oliver Twist were far more common than being the secure and happy offspring of decades-long marriages. The Wife of Bath had five husbands and the whole point of Moll Flanders is that stability is a luxury.

We are asking people to be married for far longer than ever before.

Mrs Zen and Peanut

In order not to block up the thread I posted my replies here:

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/A87744117

Cass

I haven't engaged with you before Cass because frankly I find most of what you post unfathonable...and you post vast amounts of wordiness that communicate virtually nothing to me.

However as a gay person myself I was riled when I spotted what you posted earlier on this thread.

>What worries me more than Gay Marriage < post 85

Very indirect. It was good that Mrs. Zen posted that direct question to you. I read your 'reply' on the entry. I couldn't see any attempt whatsoever to answer her question. Just more wordiness I could make no meaningful sense of. I wouldn't have a clue how to respond to it.

My prefernce in discussion is to be direct and as clear as possible. I don't think it's going to be possible for me to have any meaningful communication with you.

Probably best left to others of a calmer and more patient disposition.

Effers

The "what worries me more than Gay Marriage" phrase was intended to raise the much wider question of the problems that Humanity is facing (and has faced for some time) in this age in which primarily it is dehumanised into "Economic Man" and such like "virtual creatures" that can be fitted into the mechanisms that dominate the modern world and impose "solutions" like that now being imposed upon the Greeks, just an extreme form of the pressures that people are suffering in this Age of Austerity.

Some of these pressures you no doubt experience and have experienced yourself as a Gay man.

Over recent years I have often chatted to the Gay couple who live round the corner, usually when we are playing tennis and they are pushing around and then walking the little girl who was born to one of them before her marriage bust up. She had this friend move in with her, and it soon was obvious that they wished to be treated as a couple, which was not a problem as far as I was concerned. Last year there was a new baby. Over this winter weather I have not met up with them yet to talk to, but I caught a glimpse recently from some distance and in fact, looking back over the last 18 months, it looks very much as if one of them is undergoing a sex change.

I encountered an ex-nurse a few years ago who told me that she had been allocated to an NHS surgical team that was working full-time on the construction of penises for women who want to change sex. So this presumably would not be a Gay Marriage in the end once she has legally become male, by means of surgery and drugs.

This all seems to be a very hard road for the adults involved, and quite challenging for the children, which always tend to be my priority after so many years in the classroom. Children really are just expected to adapt to and put up with the life that adults create for them in this age when everyone is supposed to be "Liberated".

Cass

Maybe it's less of an issue to the couple or their children than it is to you?

Just a thought.

"Probably best left to others of a calmer and more patient disposition."


Well, after reading the voice from 1966 in post 91, I don't think this little lesbian woman is either calm or patient enough to do more than watch this monologue develop.


but . . .


"Children really are just expected to adapt to and put up with the life that adults create for them in this age . . ."

In what age, exactly, have children ever not been expected to adapt and put up with . . . ?

Except maybe the current one, in which so many complain that children are out of control, that children call the shots, that parents are too permissive with their children -- in short, that parents are now adapting to and putting up with the life their children create for them.


Or, to completely lose patience:


"It's not like it was in the old days, damn it!"

Och, it's always been better in the old days.

anhaga

You presumably did not watch the documentary "Baka. A Cry From the Rainforest"... There have been societies that are really child-centred and focussed, which regard children as they are as a joy and blessing to be enjoyed and nurtured- and not pressed into an adult template- but rather reconnect adults with the joy of simply having Life.

But- as I so often say- we are misled by the establishment history that wants to harness us to its mechanisms.

Cass

Kids nowadays!?

Time for a comedy interlude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDaSvRO9xA

You're right, I didn't watch that documentary. I've heard of such societies as you describe. Actually, I kinda think I live in one of 'em.

But, I'm going to try to sit back and watch rather than commenting until I can figure out what you're saying. Honestly, it sounds sort of like English, but I can't understand half of what you're posting, it seems so utterly foreign to my experience.

I'm *so* glad to find it's not just me...

One quick question Cass: why, in post 91, have you capitalised "Gay", as though it's a nationality or something rather than a normal adjective?

(Effers: how do you react to that, y'know, as a Gay man? )

I would kinda agree that we're not child-focused. It's my contention that, on the whole, Britain hates children. But I hardly see this as new. At least we've stopped sending them up chimneys.

But if you were looking for ways to improve children's lot - I hardly think gay parents would be your *first* focus. How damn queer to seize on that issue.