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London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

theguardian.com

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Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#41

Post by dspillett »

alexro wrote: post #30
TomGullen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

> Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon > ... > with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

You need to review your history on marriage including, but by no means limited to, what the bible has to say on such matters.

The biblical view of marriage is vastly different to simply "a man and a woman wanting to procreate", itself took on and in places redefined millennia of tradition that pre-dated it, and given how much of that definition the church now ignores (allowing divorce, no longer requiring the stoning non-virgins, to cite two of many examples) I don't think ignoring something that isn't actually stated in the text anyway should be a significant problem.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#42

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

TomGullen wrote: post #29
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get your Church of England reference. I'm a communicant member of a liberal CofE church and these restrictions would be anathema to me and to most of our church's congregation. Indeed, I "play a [rather loud] musical instrument" for the church every week...

When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?

I don't know: I'm not aware we've ever been asked. My guess is that our church would if we were allowed to, but that the diocese and Lambeth Palace would overrule it.

I do know that [family member], who is gay and married, has said that she feels welcomed in our church and that she wishes she'd had one like it to support her when she came out.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#43

Post by alexro »

task_queue wrote: post #38
alexro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

It's a good thing language and society are fluid despite being held back by people who are unchanging in opinion or operate on religious zeal. The function and intention of marriage has changed through time and locality. To pick a singular aspect of a complex social construct and use that to base its purpose and definition on is myopic.

So who is picking up one aspect of the complex relationship here? If I get together with an AI in the future you'll call it marriage too?

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#44

Post by DanBC »

TomGullen wrote: post #33
alexro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

Source? In the UK I'm pretty confident the definition of marriage isn't exclusive domain to heterosexual couples.

Same sex marriage is still not legal in NI, so you're not quite right for "UK". And gay people were only allowed to marry in 2014.

The UK does better than most countries for supporting LGBT rights, but it took a long time. The UK discriminated against homosexuals for many years, and we still have some way to go to fully recognising rights of LGBT people.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#45

Post by task_queue »

alexro wrote: post #37
colanderman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure "strictly defined cultural phenomenon" is an oxymoron.

Is it a better way to use different terms for when people get together to have kids and continue the family and when they just 'want' each other?

My aunt never married my uncle, they have been together for over two decades and have produced two pretty awesome children.

Reminder that this poll exists[0].

[0] http://qz.com/262645/people-without-kids-live-better-than-pa...

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#46

Post by Spare_account »

alexro wrote: post #30
TomGullen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

No it isn't. Marriage was adopted by the Church and redefined along the lines you describe - it existed long before that as a legal process to control inheritance. You're welcome to do whatever you think is best within the confines of your own marriage but to say that marriage intrinsically has your preferred attributes is incorrect.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#47

Post by mattkevan »

TomGullen wrote: post #29
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get your Church of England reference. I'm a communicant member of a liberal CofE church and these restrictions would be anathema to me and to most of our church's congregation. Indeed, I "play a [rather loud] musical instrument" for the church every week...

When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?

Liberal generally means in support of gay marriage. I'm a member of a liberal church and we're very much in support of it.

The beautiful thing about the Church of England is that it includes a wide spectrum of opinion and tradition, from high church (smells'n'bells) to scruffy low church, from liberal to conservative, left and right).

I don't agree with everything, but it's a great space for people with different backgrounds and opinion to mix and learn from each other. It can be very radical in a quiet, British, socks-and-sandals sort of way.

Ha! Didn't think I'd be writing about the CofE on HN!

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#48

Post by alexro »

ascorbic wrote: post #39
alexro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can call computer a calculator since it does indeed 'calculate' stuff, but you'll be in a minority. Computer's got so much more than a simple calculator, same with marriages - it is much more for a man and woman in every country in the world.

We're not talking about "every country in the world" though. We're talking about England, where your definition has not applied since 2013.

You confusing legal with cultural. If you go around taking about marriage only few will think about gay relationship.

And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#49

Post by alexro »

ascorbic wrote: post #40
alexro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a better way to use different terms for when people get together to have kids and continue the family and when they just 'want' each other?

So if someone is infertile then their marriage doesn't count in your eyes either?

Exactly right - this will count as a tragedy and there is lots of research aiming to help such people to have kids.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#50

Post by Wintamute »

mattgibson wrote: post #7

This article more or less describes what a police state would look like if the Church of England designed it. A controlled, plasticised, corporate Little England, where fun is monitored and must be of an approved nature, freedom of expression is allowed as long as you don't express anything disagreeable, and the public have no democratic rights at all. Yet another small, sad indicator that control over the lives of L…

I find your comment somewhat alarmist, and lacking historical context. The City of London (from which the Temple end of the Garden Bridge starts) is many many hundreds of years older than the UK itself, and has always been privately owned and governed by shadowy, corporate and arcane processes. Traditionally even the Queen is not allowed to enter the City of London without the say-so of the Lord Mayor. This "private place operating as a public space" has been operating for centuries and stewarded the emergence of London as a leading global financial centre and until recently capital of the largest Empire the world has ever seen.

I admit it's reasonable to debate the pros and cons of private ownership of public spaces in city centres, but my point is that in this case The City of London is both historically unique and important, and by many measures been a huge success for the host nation.

Informative/fun video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

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