Talk:same-sex marriage

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

same-sex marriage

Keep it is in Merriam Webster, Oxford, Black's Law, and American Heritage, and widely used in print.not making this up.Gtroy 09:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Delete as nothing more than same-sex + marriage. --Mglovesfun (talk) 22:04, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry are you saying that it doesn't matter that it is in every major English language dictionary because it falls under the technicality sum of parts? This doesn't make any sense to me.Gtroy 09:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

WT:CFI. — [Ric Laurent] — 19:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

In any case (not that it matters to Wiktionary which is not a mirror), the claim that it is "in every major English language dictionary" is clearly false unless you mean as part of an example or a citation. The phrase appears in the Oxford English Dictionary only under a cite for reconstructionist, not as an entry. Dbfirs 09:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Not according to the source I listed. And it appears in my Websters paperback.Gtroy 09:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You are mis-reading your source. It talks about the definition of the word marriage. Please read carefully. Dbfirs 07:13, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

How do the two of you know you are talking about the same dictionary? Exact title, date, and, publisher or ISBN would help. DCDuring TALK 14:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to the dictionary, but to the listed source which is on-line. I'd be interested to see the exact wording of the Webster's paperback. Dbfirs 12:40, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep (weakly): for the sake of translations. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 17:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Kept. No consensus.--Jusjih 14:47, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

traditional marriage

Unlike #gay marriage, same-sex marriage seems entirely SOP. Traditional marriage is possibly also SOP. - -sche (discuss) 22:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Given the cultural single-mindedness of "traditional marriage" (which isn't traditional in places that practice marriage with more than 2 participants, or in places where the parents pick the partners, places where marriage is more about business than love, etc.) I can see how traditional marriage could be argued to not be SOP, but really I don't care whether we have this entry or not, so I won't vote. — [Ric Laurent] — 22:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Good point. We should probably keep traditional marriage with a usage note (or at least context tags). - -sche (discuss) 23:04, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep, polysci term, frequently used in journalism.Gtroy 10:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Irrelevant to CFI. A phrase's frequent use in journalism does not stop it from being a sum of parts. — [Ric Laurent] — 11:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep as antonym of #gay marriage. This term is commonly used by opponents of gay marriage. --The Evil IP address 14:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not a vote.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep. Common use of the term by opponents of gay marriage would probably encompass a heterosexual marriage where the spouses lived in different parts of the country, each had been divorced five times before, and had seven live-in mistresses, as long as the legally recognized marriage itself was legally between one male and one female. Conversely, it would exclude a lifelong marriage between two males which was otherwise mundane and indistinguishable from any puritan marital relationship. bd2412 T 16:36, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I suspect it means only "a marriage that's traditional" (according to whatever connotation of traditional is relevant in the context in which it's said). If someone's talking about homosexuality, traditional marriage may well mean heterosexual marriage, but I doubt it would mean that if someone were to say "Bruce and Percy plan to have an open marriage, but I want a traditional marriage". Delete.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Oddly, same-sex marriage was listed here but not tagged. I've tagged it now. Delete.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, there's no sense at traditional to match with "established between two people of the opposite sex", so until we have one, or until then part of traditional marriage is removed, this isn't SoP. --Mglovesfun (talk) 22:04, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you could be opening a hideous can of worms on that one. "established between two people of the opposite sex" would only apply to the word marriage in places where marriages are established between two heterosexual people of opposite sex. I don't think you'd believe it to be wise to add a sense for traditional for every world tradition, right? — [Ric Laurent] — 11:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I bothered to look up a couple of citations which use the term traditional marriage outside of a LGBT context:

1. 1972, LIFE: Volume 73, Number 20, p. 59:

   Some married couples answered jointly, as did some unmarried couples who live together. Six hundred readers wrote letters to expand on the answers they had checked. Though there were some important exceptions, the responses, taken together, amount to a sober, often enthusiastic, sometimes angry defense of traditional marriage in America.

2. 2006, Tamo Mibang, M. C. Behera, Marriage and culture: reflections from tribal societies of Arunachal Pradesh, p. 276:

   With the changing face of the society, new ways like hosting party for social recognition have been incorporated into marriage celebration. However, even if a marriage party is hosted in a most modern way, still the customary practices are carried on side by side and the traditional marriage essence is maintained.

3. 2008, Kristina LaCelle-Peterson, Liberating Tradition: Women's Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective, (no page numbers):

   Further, these varied practices have changed over time, even across the many cultures and centuries in which the biblical texts were written. Most notably polygamy, which figures prominently in early Old Testament stories, disappears from view in the New Testament. But we tend to read our own ways of doing things back to our ancestors, and so we assume that our version of traditional marriage is something lifted straight out of the Bible.

From these examples, it seems obvious that this term is just traditional + marriage. delete -- Liliana • 11:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Those are sum of parts, from india, from the 70s, before the idiomatic counterargument term to gay marriage took off.Gtroy 01:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Uh Troy, only one of those is from the 70s. The second two are from within the past 5 years. The one from the 70s wasn't from India, the one from 2006 is. — [Ric Laurent] — 11:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I understood Gtroy to mean that one of the cites was from the seventies (and therefore inapplicable to the current discussion), and another of the cites was from India (and therefore inapplicable to the current discussion). Certainly the 1970s definition of "traditional marriage" has been superseded by events. In current usage, the couple who lived together for years before getting married and engaged in spouse-swapping afterwards would still be a deemed a "traditional marriage" so long as one was male and the other female. Conversely, a homosexual couple who in every respect conducts themselves as a couple in a traditional marriage would have in 1972 are still not deemed to have a "traditional marriage". The third citation actually supports the notion that "traditional marriage" is not marriage that is "traditional", but is instead marriage that conforms to cerain political views of the moment. bd2412 T 12:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

• If we have this as an entry, wouldn't we need to have all attestable senses? Isn't (deprecated template usage) traditional a deictic word whose reference depends on context. I would argue that it is ad little like a pronoun or words like (deprecated template usage) this, (deprecated template usage) that, or (deprecated template usage) such in this regard. The denotation of traditional would seem to be about the same in all cases: "observant of (some) tradition", the specific tradition being dependent on context. For example, someone might well mean a heterosexual marriage that involved a stay-at-home care-giving mother rather than a two-earner-cum-nanny arrangement, or a marriage without open adultery vs an "open marriage", or a marriage of spouses of child-bearing age rather than a marriage of eighty-year olds.

Then there are all the deixes involving the "wedding" sense of (deprecated template usage) marriage.

I suppose that if we are all bored with lexicography (building a dictionary), we could get into the analysis of texts in areas of topical interest and list all kinds of meanings of collocations of all kinds. DCDuring TALK 14:37, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Have politicians in earlier eras gone to the stump to declare their support for "traditional marriage" in front of crowds who agreed based on a specific subtext being given to the phrase? I don't recall seeing this specific phrase used in the rhetoric of the debates against interracial marriage, or even against cohabitation outside of marriage (having also been illegal at times). bd2412 T 19:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Kept. No consensus.--Jusjih 14:43, 23 January 2012 (UTC)