I am sure sterotyping and caricaturing people is par for the course for “liberal minded kiwis” but don’t pretend its anything other than that.

Actually its more likely that wealthy political leaders could get around Canon law for political reasons. Aquinas in context is not regulating the activity of children he is talking about what counts as a valid marriage per se and states canon law in his day places it at puberty. Gratian is online and the text David refers to refers to a bethrothal.

A parents marriage to a a partner automatically makes them a step-parent, no adoption is involved.

Yet a civil union partnership does not do so.

I was correcting your misapprehension (you claimed that only betrothal was allowed at age 7), Richard 11 made an actual marriage to his second wife when she was 6 – and she became Queen from then on. Not by a betrothal, but by a marriage.

It would seem that parents (King of France) form the contract for the marriage in these state liasons, thus the canon law may be a restriction of the behaviour of minors – but less so of parents, expecially royalty.

ROFLMAO You sir are an ignorant shit, a few western countries have gone down this path of degeneracy, that is all. For the vast majority of the planet this silliness is not even on the radar and if you were to ask the citizens of those lands about homosexuals marrying one another they would think you were bonkers – They’s be correct

Sorry, Andrei, I should have been more clear. I was talking about the majority of New Zealanders, not the entire planet. They’s be the ones I’m talking about. Apologies for appearing like an ignorant shit.

Here is what David said in his submission to parliament.

“In the 12th century European canon law documented by Gratian allowed marriage from the age of seven onwards, and stayed in force religiously until 1918.”

Compare that with Thomas Aquinas writing in the 13th century, easily checkable.

“Since marriage is effected by way of a contract, it comes under the ordinance of positive law like other contracts. Consequently according to law (cap. Tua, De sponsal. impub.) it is determined that marriage may not be contracted before the age of discretion when each party is capable of sufficient deliberation about marriage, and of mutual fulfilment of the marriage debt, and that marriages otherwise contracted are void. Now for the most part this age is the fourteenth year in males and the twelfth year in women: but since the ordinances of positive law are consequent upon what happens in the majority of cases, if anyone reach the required perfection before the aforesaid age, so that nature and reason are sufficiently developed to supply the lack of age, the marriage is not annulled. Wherefore if the parties who marry before the age of puberty have marital intercourse before the aforesaid age, their marriage is none the less perpetually indissoluble.”

Who to believe about Medieval Canon law, David Farrar or Thomas Aquinas?

But they ARE connected Reid. Gay marriage first. Gay couple adoption next!

No SPC that flaw is beyond the ability of human law to fix. Therefore not something the law should even try to address.

Case closed.

Like I say, the only “flaw” in the current law is apparently, gays can’t adopt. Fine. So it’s not a gay marriage issue is it, it’s a gay adoption issue, isn’t it.

Lest you misunderstand understand, let me repeat the same point. The law cannot give gays their own family, therefore these is no inequality. The law may be able to give gays the right to adopt, so let’s debate that, but let’s do so on the accurate and factual understanding that gay adoption is not, repeat not, anything whatsoever to do, with gay marriage. They are two separate issues.

Not difficult is it SPC. Not rocket science, as they say.

And notice that still, none of the useless idiots arguing for gay marriage, has even attempted to explain why the logic I’ve outlined isn’t sound. [Pretending not to understand it or ignoring it doesn't count as an argument SPC.]

Obviously there are still people like yourself for whom “marriage” means something different from “a loving committed relationship between two consenting adults”. You are in the minority, and trying to get other people to conform to your outmoded definition will not get you anywhere.

ROFLMAO You sir are an ignorant shit, a few western countries have gone down this path of degeneracy, that is all. For the vast majority of the planet this silliness is not even on the radar and if you were to ask the citizens of those lands about homosexuals marrying one another they would think you were bonkers – They’s be correct

Ryan, you’re doing it again, changing something to mean what you want it to mean: in this case my example, which is perfectly valid. A Terakehi is still a fish and that makes it still fish and chips. Which is like saying a woman is Chinese or English or American – but she is still a woman and a wife. My analogy to sausage and chips is more like what we’re talking about. A man can never be a wife.

Fletch, you’re doing it again, changing something to mean what you want it to mean. You want “marriage” to include “a man and a woman” as essential to its meaning. I’m simply acknowledging that while it may have meant that once, it’s about love these days, not about the sex of the lovers in question. The sex of the consenting adults is incidental, not essential, to what marriage is. Or what the word “marriage” has come to mean.

That’s why gay marriage is a thinkable proposition these days. It’s not a contradiction in terms like “square circle” or “free will”. Even when people are opposed to it, the majority of them are opposed to gay marriage, opposed to two men being married. The fact that they can conceive of such a thing enough to disapprove of it is just further demonstration of how “marriage” has come to be a romantic commitment thing in the majority of people’s minds.

Obviously there are still people like yourself for whom “marriage” means something different from “a loving committed relationship between two consenting adults”. You are in the minority, and trying to get other people to conform to your outmoded definition will not get you anywhere.

I don’t know what would actually get you anywhere, actually, in your desire to have the State enforce your religiously grounded definition on everyone. Never thought about that, what I would advise to an activist in that situation. Fear-mongering might help, if you can get people to think that gay marriage means gay parents, and that gay people are dangerous to be around children. Pull some dodgily funded studies from the States or something, get someone on TV putting that fear into people’s brains. Maybe actively work to confuse the issue of consent so that people get it into their heads that non-consenting relationships (pets, children, etc.) are next on some kind of spectrum, rather than being an entirely different sort of thing by virtue of their lack of consent and adulthood.

Um. What else could you do.

Outlawing gay sex would help, I’m sure, but that horse has already bolted.

Hmm.

You could try to promote some kind of idealised male/female marriage in the media somehow. Traditional gender roles, but not quite so traditional that you can’t sidestep complaints of gender inequality – a “look, she’s out in the workforce too” sort of thing. God knows how you’d do it, though. Write a really popular TV show. Oh, get Shortland Street writers on board. Have them write likable characters who stand for traditional values and won’t hold with all of this marriage-redefinition nonsense. Have someone who opposes them on the show turn out to be a paedophile or murderer or something. That could work.

Um. No point swamping talkback radio, cos that’s just preaching to the choir. You need to plant those little seeds of fear. That’s your best bet.

I think I’ve heard it all now…