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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

#61

Post by dghf »

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 meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

So are you saying that when people marry in old age, it's not really marriage?

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

#62

Post by alexro »

dragonwriter wrote: post #57
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.

> 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. This is wrong in so many ways; "marriage" is a concept that exists in many cultures with many different different understandings, and those understandings have historically been fluid over time even within the same culture. Its most consistently a pro…

So why didn't people go out, pick up some orphan kid and give him whatever needed to be 'inherited'?

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

#64

Post by alexro »

foldr wrote: post #53
alexro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker. The "sticker" was a visa in my husband's case. Although the UK does not require you to be married to your partner in order for them to get a visa, you have to provide all kinds of ridiculous documentation in the absence of a marriage certificate. In other countries (e.g. the US), being married is an absolute requ…

Does it make more sense to change Visa laws to allow more flexible relationships? Would you then not need to be 'married' and just use your partnership status?

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

#65

Post by dragonwriter »

alexro wrote: post #62
dragonwriter wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is wrong in so many ways; "marriage" is a concept that exists in many cultures with many different different understandings, and those understandings have historically been fluid over time even within the same culture. Its most consistently a pro…

So why didn't people go out, pick up some orphan kid and give him whatever needed to be 'inherited'?

In its historical roots, though often (but far from always) without the "orphan" part, that's exactly what marriage is: the process by which a family chooses some non-family person to share with some member of the family in the inheritance of the family. (Sometimes in a reciprocal, but even when so often not symmetrical, relationship with another family.)

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

#66

Post by alexro »

dghf wrote: post #61
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.

> 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. So are you saying that when people marry in old age, it's not really marriage?

It is an exception and was a source for many jokes and lots of drama in literature, wasn't it?

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

#67

Post by jarek »

alexro wrote: post #64
foldr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker. The "sticker" was a visa in my husband's case. Although the UK does not require you to be married to your partner in order for them to get a visa, you have to provide all kinds of ridiculous documentation in the absence of a marriage certificate. In other countries (e.g. the US), being married is an absolute requ…

Does it make more sense to change Visa laws to allow more flexible relationships? Would you then not need to be 'married' and just use your partnership status?

Rather than changing a million regulations that give status to spouses to also include partners, why not just change the definition of a spouse?

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

#68

Post by foldr »

alexro wrote: post #64
foldr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker. The "sticker" was a visa in my husband's case. Although the UK does not require you to be married to your partner in order for them to get a visa, you have to provide all kinds of ridiculous documentation in the absence of a marriage certificate. In other countries (e.g. the US), being married is an absolute requ…

Does it make more sense to change Visa laws to allow more flexible relationships? Would you then not need to be 'married' and just use your partnership status?

I can see how someone might have asked that question in 1995.

Gay marriage is now legal in the UK. Are you suggesting that it would make "more sense" now to abolish gay marriage and try to adjust 100s of other laws and regulations to prevent any disadvantage to gay people? Surely this must be a disingenuous suggestion.

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

#69

Post by jarek »

Wintamute wrote: post #50
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…

The bridge is a particularly contentious subject since it's funded by tens of millions of pounds of public money. If The City wants an independent bridge, surely it shouldn't be a problem to stump 40 million rather than asking TfL as if this was a major transport project.

Though yes, all the fuss is slightly ironic in the city where most central greenspaces are property of Royal Parks.

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

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

Spare_account wrote: post #46
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.

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.

> 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.

For property purpose more generally: controlling inheritance was part of that, but a related part (and perhaps a more significant part in early societies where inheritances were small) was economic support the other direction, up the family tree rather than down. Where children (and grandchildren, and lateral relatives) care for their parents (and grandparents, etc.) in their old age instead of their existing nonfamily social support networks, establishing broader family bonds through formal unions is important to that.

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