Recent content by Caravelle

It was supposed to be followed by "'nt think it should've been cut", I apologize for my noobiness, the poll has been corrected ;)

It was the same show xD (and a show by the same guy as this time, too, although the broadcaster is different)

I'm not seeing this here so I thought I might post it for kicks. Can you embed Youtube videos here ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SFdUJLebzU (story is Tim Minchin was asked to write a Christmas song for the Jonathan Ross show, he cooked something up despite being sick and way too busy...

For one thing, you'll notice I included "dressing to attract the opposite sex" among heterosexual behaviors. Insofar as acting and dressing "gay" helps people signal their orientation to other gay people and possibly be more attractive to them, it's parallel behavior. Who are you to decide...

Yeah. That's not specific to marriage though; it's a side-effect of the fact that until recently "heterosexual" was considered an unspoken but obvious part of everybody, and every relationship. It's only a few decades ago that homosexuality stopped being classified as a mental illness in the US...

So romantic love is an "unspecified perk" of marriage ? That's one old-school version of "traditional marriage" they're going with... :p (I'm just kidding with you, no worries :) )

I'm pretty sure everybody gets the whole "everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex !" thing. They get it, and dismiss it because it's disingenuous. Nobody cares about the right to marry a random person of the opposite sex; what people want is to marry the person they're...

Oh God, first Godwin and now the Oppression Olympics ? Antisemitism is backed up by large groups, covertly promoted far and wide, and somewhat believed in by millions of people. It's certainly nothing compared to how things were before WWII, and it isn't as virulent in the Western world as it is...

This time I really think Godwin's law applies. Hitler/Nazis/the Holocaust are powerful images, and using them as analogies to things that aren't as powerful, or where they aren't necessary, cheapens those powerful images as simple analogy-fodder and detracts from the point being made, because...

Have you ever seen men hitting on women ? Women talking about their boyfriends ? Men and women salivating over how hot some opposite-sex celebrity is ? Straight couples holding hands, or hugging, or even kissing ? People dressing to be attractive to the opposite sex ? Married people going around...

That is an excellent question. You see it even more with feminism, with clashes between anti-racism and respecting other cultures vs respecting women's rights. There is lots of disagreement between well-meaning people (not to mention non-well-meaning people) on what the balance should be on any...

Wrong. It's kind of like saying that freedom must include freedom to enslave people or be enslaved. You'd think so, but slavery is the antithesis of freedom so you end up with a paradox. The reality is that freedom and tolerance aren't simple concepts, they're complex states of affairs that...

I'm afraid I don't. Whatever its origin in the Western world, "marriage" isn't a religious term right now. Atheists get married all the time. It's a social institution. If you want to completely separate the social institution from the religious meaning it has for some people I think that's a...

I'd go to the Cambrian to get some footage of Wiwaxia and/or trilobites. Or possibly the courts of a late-dynasty Pharaoh or a Chinese emperor. Or the Heian-period court in Japan. See what old-school opulence looked like basically. If anything it would surely look good on film ! (if you...

And is there a reason those civil unions couldn't be called "marriages" ? Religion doesn't have a monopoly on the word.