For instance, how is the number two applicable to something that is defined by the number one -- one sex?

Is it about romance? But no legal requirement for that. Is it about love? But no legal requirement for that. Is it about holding hands? But no legal requirement for that.

You made a huge deal about legal requirements that made something compulsory. You made a huge deal about stuff that can occur outside of marriage is not exclusive to marriage. That's your argument, Emma, and you are now fleeing from it just because your SSM idea cannot stand up to meet your own standards.

That's a huge problem that your comments have revealed. You need to recalibrate. Toss out those weak arguments and find something better. Recognize the limitations of lawmaking. Start with the type of relationship you have in mind and identify its essentials -- before you start pinning labels to it.

Make your SSM idea stand on its own two feet rather than hoisting it up onto the back of marriage for a free ride. Afterall, you reject the marriage idea -- as per your attacks on it. Your comments have been self-defeating you should complain about that instead of the clarity I've asked of you.

Explain instead of complain.

You said: "What about dilution of the races by a minority?"

Are you going to use the criteria of racialism to divide the one human race into subgroups? If not, then, your question is bogus. Maybe you will point to procreation as the basis for the notion of "dilution"? If yes, then, you are undermining your previous remarks about procreation.

For the sake of this discussion, can you refrain from throwing racialist bombs? Thanks.

* * *

Jeri, if, in turn, you'd defer to someone else, you ought to do so knowing the explanation to which you'd defer.

If you'd defer just for the sake of dodging, then, no, that deferral is insufficient explanation.

Is it not your own belief that you are trying to explain -- or someone else's which you don't really believe or don't really understand?

* * *

You said: "If I understand correctly ..."

No, you haven't understood.

You are attempting exagerate, to magnify, the rarest of *apparent* exceptions to the core meaning of marriage. It is not an actual exception. You are on a wild-goose chase.

Worse, you're comments have shown how the number two does not apply to 3rd party procreation and so your jumping-in to use 3rd party procreation as a way to explain "same-sex couple" has not helped explain the phrase 'same-sex couple'. Three is not two and three does not comprise a couple. Nor does one.

* * *

What is the accomodation you would put into the marriage law?

It comes back to an explanation of the phrase "same-sex couple"; you now hint that there is something immutable in that explanation.

But neither is society forced to accept that two left shoes are "equal" to a pair of shoes, or that two women playing house together are "equal" to a man and a wife.

If that's what makes you more comfortable, then fine. But please don't ask the rest of us to play along with your little charade.

Jeri #117, Sex/gender is certainly binary. That you can produce a miniscule fraction of the population that suffers from birth defects doesn't change anything -- even those people are the result of exactly one man and one woman.

This is a fair question given that SSMers have invest so much in this phrase. It supposedly has meaning for society that can be spelled out clearly and without transgressing the very same rules that SSMers have used to attack the core meaning of marriage. Indeed, if it is more meaningful than that core meaning, it ought to be explanable forthwith.

Yet SSMers cannot find the words to explain and rely on some unspoken underlying assumption(s) that they fear to bring to the surface. Does that explain their hestiation? I dunno. But there's something odd about assuming a phrase can carry such weight and then leaving it empty and hollow.

If you are going to count the "couple" as two parties, then, you reinforced what I said earlier.

The one-sexed scenario is as nonfertile in the form of a onesome, twosome, or moresome and so what you've being saying does not help explain the meaning of "same-sex couple".

There is the consumer individual, the donor individual, and the center which enables the transaction between the first two.

If you want to break the couple into two individuals, okay, but that still does not change the fact that the whole enterprise requires both sexes and begins, not with an infertile couple, but with a nonfertile scenario -- be it an individual or any number of persons of the same sex.

* * *

You said: "civil marriage law does not discriminate against this minority"

What minority -- a minority of one individual? We are back to what you mean by "same-sex couple".

Note that people are not suddenly made eligible to marry due to their use of, or intent to use, '3rd party' gametes. You are barking up the wrong tree.

* * *

TC is correct. The infertile couple's condition is a disability vis-a-vis what we've discussed. An infertile couple is an opposite-sex couple whose fertility is hindered or impaired. It might be due to a birth defect, a disease or malformation inherited, a or a handicap as a result of life-saving surgery such as for cancer. Far more common, however, is infertility in which the couple resolve their problem through behavioral changes. Maybe a fraction of 1% even use IVF/ARTs but the vast majority -- more than 93% of married couples -- do not use 'donated' gametes.

You are really trying to magnify the rarest of *apparent* exceptions among opposite-sex couples. But in so doing you are not explaining the meaning of "same-sex couple".

You've intervened here to point to how a one-sexed arrangement must always rely on including the sex it has otherwise excluded. If that is what you mean by "same-sex couple" then maybe you are trying to equate the lack of the other sex with a disability. But it is a chosen arrangement, as per SSM argumentation.

The lack of the other sex is a feature, not a glitch, in the same-sex arrangement, according SSMers.

Is it a glitch or a malady or a disability in your view, Jeri, and have those SSMers been mistaken all along?

I think you will need to stop digging the hole deeper.

* * *

Emma are you depending on Jeri to explain the meaning of "same-sex couple" in the SSM idea? Is the use of 3rd party gametes a legal requirement for those who'd show up to SSM?

On the contrary it is very relevant. Minorities are not relevant? If they are akin to a defect in your non-scientific view, they and their families should just be ignored when it comes to marriage law?

Because they are miniscule?

What about dilution of the races by a minority? Should certain folks be excluded because of this supposed "defect?"

Jeri, did you read the comment? I said being born without a limb is more akin to what you are talking about. It isn't relevant to the conversation. Sorry.