Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch was based on one written 1,600 years ago in Ancient Greece. Historians have revealed it is in the world's oldest joke book - entitled Philogelos, or The Lover of Laughter, reports The Sun. In the fourth-century version, a man goes up to a slave trader and moans: "The slave you sold me died." Under the law then, he was entitled to damages. The trader replies: "Did he? By the gods, when he was with me he never did such a thing!"
Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch was based on one written 1,600 years ago in Ancient Greece.
Historians have revealed it is in the world's oldest joke book - entitled Philogelos, or The Lover of Laughter, reports The Sun.
In the fourth-century version, a man goes up to a slave trader and moans: "The slave you sold me died."
Under the law then, he was entitled to damages.
The trader replies: "Did he? By the gods, when he was with me he never did such a thing!"
So they've honoured charles Darwin and his work on galapagos islands and the mockingbird. Except the bird pictured on the new note is a ....hummingbird.
Whooops - a - daisy keep to the Fen Causeway
Feministing - Rick
People say that this is re-defining marriage, or is of some other cultural significance. Saying this makes you seem ignorant of how language works. A "bow" is the front part of a ship. A "bow" is a gesture made by bending at the waist. The letters are the same. The pronunciation is the same, but the words refer to very different things. "Marriage" is a social institution. "Marriage" is a religious institution. "Marriage" is a legal institution. The letters are the same. The pronunciations are the same. But the words refer to very different things. My parents have stated to their community that they intend to spend their lives together, the community recognizes them as a social unit. They thus have a marriage(social). They both believe in a god, and their church has recognized this union as a holy bond between souls. Thus they have a marriage(religious). They also signed a contract, designed, sustained and enforced by the powers of the state in which they live. This contract was created under state law and grants them certain rights and obligations towards one another. Thus they have a marriage(civil). The problem with your position is you are watering down the meaning of marriage by conflating all the definitions with marriage(civil). What the state grants, the state can take away. You're ascribing to the state the power and authority to break up not only my parents marriage(civil) but also their marriage(religious) and their marriage(social). Prop 8 has no impact on what god does or doesn't do; the Govenator isn't quite that powerful yet. Nor can the state force you to recognize a given household arrangement as good or not good. So, when people go, "It's not about law, it's about a social institution" I look at them with contempt. Either you're so amoral that you look to what is legal to determine what is moral or you're playing linguistic games to disguise bigotry. Either way, this is a position that deserves no respect
Saying this makes you seem ignorant of how language works.
A "bow" is the front part of a ship. A "bow" is a gesture made by bending at the waist. The letters are the same. The pronunciation is the same, but the words refer to very different things.
"Marriage" is a social institution. "Marriage" is a religious institution. "Marriage" is a legal institution. The letters are the same. The pronunciations are the same. But the words refer to very different things.
My parents have stated to their community that they intend to spend their lives together, the community recognizes them as a social unit. They thus have a marriage(social).
They both believe in a god, and their church has recognized this union as a holy bond between souls. Thus they have a marriage(religious).
They also signed a contract, designed, sustained and enforced by the powers of the state in which they live. This contract was created under state law and grants them certain rights and obligations towards one another. Thus they have a marriage(civil).
The problem with your position is you are watering down the meaning of marriage by conflating all the definitions with marriage(civil).
What the state grants, the state can take away. You're ascribing to the state the power and authority to break up not only my parents marriage(civil) but also their marriage(religious) and their marriage(social).
Prop 8 has no impact on what god does or doesn't do; the Govenator isn't quite that powerful yet. Nor can the state force you to recognize a given household arrangement as good or not good.
So, when people go, "It's not about law, it's about a social institution" I look at them with contempt.
Either you're so amoral that you look to what is legal to determine what is moral or you're playing linguistic games to disguise bigotry.
Either way, this is a position that deserves no respect
I admit I got a bit tearful reading some of this stuff of people coming together to protest injustice and being energised. And I realised I hadn't felt like that with Obama's victory cos there was a sense of inevitability about it that, for a foreigner, dulled the pleasure. But this was unexpected, I really didn't expect prop 8 to pass, I was shocked and hurt and said some angry things I regret, but seeing this reaction makes me feel good and hopeful in a way Obama never did for me, so I teared up a bit. (Twank falls off chair at Helen saying anything positive)
Best quote
For younger gays, this is the first time we've had the chance to take to the streets and fight for our basic humanity. Now that we've gotten a taste of what it feels like, I don't think we're ever going to give it up.
I love the sentiment, but it's bittersweet that now, in the west in the 21st century, gay people still feel they have to fight for their humanity. keep to the Fen Causeway
Why? Because Prop. 8 is not about hating gay people (for some people, at least). Aren't there legitimate cultural conservatives out there who are simply uncomfortable with a redefinition of marriage? Say what you will about the institution, but it has been around for thousands of years, so I think that whether or not it should be changed is a legitimate debate. Now, if Eckern is had said, "I think being gay is wrong, so I'm voting against Prop. 8," then any backlash would be for personal - not political - views. But while not constitutionally protected, I think everyone benefits from having all political views protected from personal backlash.
Aren't there legitimate cultural conservatives out there who are simply uncomfortable with a redefinition of marriage? Say what you will about the institution, but it has been around for thousands of years, so I think that whether or not it should be changed is a legitimate debate.
Now, if Eckern is had said, "I think being gay is wrong, so I'm voting against Prop. 8," then any backlash would be for personal - not political - views. But while not constitutionally protected, I think everyone benefits from having all political views protected from personal backlash.
Now, aside from the "it's not about what you are, it's about what you said" red herring, the thing I find compelling about the repsonse is that too many on the Prop8 side are saying that allowing gays to marry is a blow against all marriage, against the tradition of marriage, when it is anything but. The responder states that there are 3 potential aspects of marriage and each of them is not actually related to the other two but may or may not exist co-incidentally. This, to my mind, utterly demolishes the prop8 contention.
However, I appreciate I'm probably too close to it and too easily swayed by people being clever rather than intelligent, but can't hang around cos I'm out the door in a couple of mins and have to sign out. keep to the Fen Causeway
Similarly a 'civil' ceremony legitimises the relationship under a slightly more visible but still somewhat abstract civil authority.
More or less at the bottom of the scale of legitimisation is two people saying in public that they would like to stay together. It's not usually enough for two people to do this, because - as any authoritarian will tell you - people can't be trusted to stay out of trouble and keep their promises.
So the statement is meaningless socially unless legitimised by an external authority. (It won't feel meaningless personally, but if personal feelings were considered foundational, marriage wouldn't exist at all.)
So there really is only one kind of marriage - a public ceremony where a totemic authority approves the union. The only apparent difference is that different sub-communities choose to respect different authority totems.
By removing the possibility for formal approval, gay relationships are delegitimised. The implication is that gay relationships can't be serious, unlike 'real' straight marriages.
It doesn't need a round trip through any of the amendments to get to this - it's a very obvious and straightforward form of discrimination.
The notion that 'marriage has been around for thousands of years' is nonsense, of course. In practice, marriage has always meant different things in different cultures.
Also - why has hardly anyone pointed out the irony of a church which promotes polygamy complaining about 'the redefinition of marriage'?
In the Catholic wedding, the priest and congregation certainly thought that TheirGod had sanctioned the wedding and the couple. With all the joy in the room, I'm not certain that they would be wrong. I don't know if Italian law says that they have to have a civil ceremony before.
The civil authority wasn't too abstract, nor were the expectations during the ceremony in Cannes. Everyone knew what they were getting out of the package. They could have gotten a religious ceremony on top of that, but didn't.
The problem in California is that there is a discrimination issue that won't go away since the door is too open and there are too many precedents. The courts will again and again slap that way. The state sanctions and approves certain things, among them certain legal immunities, tax and estate privileges, and things like hospital visits, among others.
The problem, of course, is not just those silly Californians, but the federal law that inseminates insinuates the marriage rights of another state into all states.
I'm sure that someone pointed out that in previous centuries, when the Mormons were being slaughtered for being too 'other' that they had a MotivatedProcreationalPlan. But it hasn't been promoted for a long time. I don't know much about the religion, but most of them are pretty straight-laced. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
In the Catholic wedding, the priest and congregation certainly thought that TheirGod had sanctioned the wedding and the couple. With all the joy in the room, I'm not certain that they would be wrong.
That's totems for you. Would there have been any less joy among pagans or buddhists?
siegestate:
They could have gotten a religious ceremony on top of that, but didn't.
If you're not part of a sub-community, its rituals won't have any mojo for you and you're unlikely to bother with them.
The difference with civil ceremonies is that there are legal and financial rights, expectations and privileges.
Anthropological nuance aside, denying those to a group is discriminatory.
Difficult not to concur, since I made the same point.
I also said the same, minus the smear on AnthropologicalNuanceTM. I don't feel like dragging this out, but one must agree that there is more to life than legal and financial rights, expectations and privileges. I can't think of any, but certainly there must be something. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
In our election last week in Colorado we had an anti-abortion proposition that attempted to define conception as the beginning of life. Everybody opposed it--even the Catholics and other pretty virulent anti-abortion organizations--because it would have generated hundreds of lawsuits over how it affected those many existing laws.
The marriage versus civil union discussion follows roughly the same lines. If you just say that gay marriage is ok, then pretty much everything falls into place. But if you try to introduce a new legal concept of civil unions, then the legal system has to trace through all of the new implications and interactions.
