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This quote speaks on how you should carry yourself in the manner of what how your parents raised you.

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This quote speaks on how you should carry yourself in the manner of what how your parents raised you.

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This quote is generally how society wants us all to come together and live happy in a family. 

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This quote is generally how society wants us all to come together and live happy in a family. 

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How church isn't what it use to be.

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Holding up your standards and having morals for yourself.

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Not liking your step sister.

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Do you feel like marrying your step sister incest? Well, some believe that technically its not because you're not related by blood only by marriage.

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Your step sister by definition is one who is not related by blood to you. You are only related thru the marriage of your seperate parents. Therefore there is no legal, moral or ethical reason for you to marry. It is not incest, that would require her to be your half sister...That is, if you share a common parent.
That being said, concerns could be raised if you have grown up together from a young age. Such a close intimate bond such as growing up together may be overshadowing real feelings and confusing things.

Edited questions require edited answers.
At the age of +21 and never having grown up or lived together, it would be perfectly acceptable for you to marry your step sister. Anyone vulgar or rude enough to comment that your parents are married and you are marrying each other isn't worth the time or effort.

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Answer (1 of 7): Your step sister by definition is one who is not related by blood to you. You are only related thru the marriage of your seperate parents. Therefore there is no legal, moral or ethical reason for you to marry. It is not incest, that would require her to be your half sister...That...

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A Modern Family vs. A traditional Family

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A Modern Family vs. A traditional Family

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In this video, it explains the difference between a lot of controversial issues in today's society.

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Traditional vs. Nontraditional Families in the US

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This article was generally about a young man that stands with gay marriage but he feels like some the arguments that "gay" people went up against really didn't make a lot of sense. So, he stated that gay supporters needed better arguments and needed to state why people should support them. Also, why should they be looked down upon just because of there sexuality and who they chose to date.

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Brendan Wynter lives in Melbourne, where he divides his time between his private speechwriting consultancy and caring for his infant son.
Recently I was the contributing "Voice in the Wilderness" on RN's God Forbid program - a segment dedicated, at least nominally, to opinions that receive less frequent coverage in the mainstream media.

The segment and its format called for something sharp, short and, hopefully, provocative. But I was not being deliberately tendentious.

I argued that the concept of legal equality was not, on its own, the basis for state recognition of same-sex marriage.

I suggested that the "marriage equality" framing of the issue had situated same-sex marriage within a particular liberal conception of justice that made support for same-sex marriage neutral and obvious: whatever you thought of same-sex marriage or indeed marriage itself, you could not be against equality.

But I contended that the question of same-sex marriage could not - and indeed has not - been able to avoid questions relating to both the purpose of marriage and the value of same-sex marriage itself. Indeed, to reduce same-sex marriage to legal equality was incorrectly to categorise the nature of the injustice experienced by same-sex couples.

Moreover, while the marriage equality slogan has been rhetorically effective in societies such as ours, it has also been divisive and was in part to blame for the ill feeling that has sometimes characterized our public discussion.

Finally, I asserted that same-sex marriage campaigners and their supporters in the Federal Parliament had made a tactical error in opposing a national plebiscite on the question, and raised the possibility that that error may have been informed by an advocacy which had overemphasized the view of marriage as a legal, rather than a cultural practice.

The following week, the "Voice in the Wilderness" segment was used to refute my piece. The Rev. Dr Margaret Mayman of Pitt Street Uniting Church in Sydney argued that the equality framing of the issue was both accurate and appropriate, and that if the cause had stalled, the marriage equality campaign bore none of the blame.

I agreed with much of what she said; both of us, after all, want to see same-sex marriage become a reality. But she didn't directly engage with my argument, and her arguments demonstrated many of tendencies that have made the "marriage equality" formulation problematic.

Here I want to try to flesh out the issues I could only raise briefly on air. Central to my concern are that the reasons we ascribe to our political motivations can matter as much as the eventual outcome. They matter both for how the public discussion is conducted, and the consequences this has for how we understand our future political challenges.

In essence, marriage-equality advocacy has at times been guilty of the triumphant cosmopolitanism that's been the subject of electoral backlash all over the world.

The problem

I've been in favour of same-sex marriage since it first came to my attention in the early 1990s. My support was intuitive. It just seemed fair. I thought gay marriage - that's what we used to call it - would prove one of the less controversial reforms coming in the wake of so many civil rights battles that had already been fought and won.

So how did same-sex marriage get bogged down - and not just in Australia? Why has something as simple as allowing two people of the same sex to marry been so vexing and drawn out? Why hasn't that apparently bullet-proof civil rights principle of equal treatment before the law been enough to carry the day?

Was it simply due to a desperate rear-guard action by a conservative right that has been unable to prevent every other milestone in the battle for same-sex rights? A final line in the sand drawn by conservatives: "You've come this far - but no further!" That's a large part of it, surely. And framed this way, the simple task for progressives was to push until the battle is won, and push on hard.

But something about some of the arguments I was hearing struck me as shallow and even wrong. In particular, I was uneasy about how the message delivered by the endless number of same-sex marriage memes appearing on my social media feeds tried to sum up the case: usually, by asserting that marriage was a completely private matter - like, Tell me again? How does my gay marriage affect you? or Don't like my gay marriage? Don't get one?

This didn't seem to do justice to either to what marriage means, nor the profound change to that meaning that same sex marriage entailed.

By challenging my own intuitions - a bit of reading and bit of listening to the other side's views - I concluded that "marriage equality" (as it is often framed by its proponents) lacked the conceptual depth necessary to justify the cause or explain why same-sex marriage has, or will, become a reality.

Our best ideas aren't always good enough

Equality before the law, freedom of choice, non-discrimination, human rights. are surely the bedrock of our modern political culture and possibly the best way we've found of respecting the dignity of individuals in all their glorious variety. They are so much a part of our culture that they have become almost instinctive. They work well in a pluralistic society because they embody a certain kind of neutrality on what is good and virtuous. As long as we don't hurt anyone, individuals get to choose that for themselves.

The advantage for same-sex marriage advocacy, is that we are able to take a neutral position on the moral worth of voluntary intimate relationships and, by extension, same-sex marriage; even if you have a problem with same-sex marriage, you couldn't stand in the way of someone's right to have one. Live and let live.

Fair enough - almost. But no set of ideas is so perfectly designed to describe every human problem, or provide a solution to every human conflict. Compared to marriage, these ideas are very new, so it seemed reasonable to ask whether they could neatly be applied to an institution that is discriminatory by its very nature.

What does marriage honour?

My search for an alternative set of conceptual tools led me to Michael Sandel, one of America's best-known living political philosophers. He suggested that one way - by no means the only way - of clarifying what is at stake with same-sex marriage, was to apply an older, Aristotelian concept of justice.

Aristotle said justice is about giving people what they deserve. That means we must determine what's virtuous and worthy of honour and reward. Sandel proposes that marriage can better be thought of as an honorific institution. Society bestows the honour of marriage on certain relationships because they exhibit certain virtues society has a stake in preserving. Sandel again:

"The case for same sex marriage cannot be made on non-judgemental grounds. It depends on a certain conception of the telos of marriage - it's purpose and point. And, as Aristotle reminds us, to argue about the purpose of a social institution is to argue about the virtues it honours and rewards. The debate over same-sex marriage is fundamentally a debate about whether gay and lesbian unions are worthy of honour and recognition that, in our society, state-sanctioned marriage confers. So the underlying moral question is unavoidable."

This reasoning, one might say, could constitute a more conservative case for same-sex marriage: that we should extend the telos - not the right - of marriage to same-sex couples to promote the good of faithful, long-term relationships. To simplify the logic would run something like: same-sex relationships are good and marriage is good; both for those who marry and for society. Therefore same-sex marriage is good!

I believe this is a more coherent and less divisive formula for advancing same-sex marriage. I also believe it's a more accurate way of explaining how support for same-sex marriage has evolved in societies like ours. But it doesn't add up to "marriage equality" in any pure sense. And pointing out, as Dr Mayman does, that the relationships of transgender and intersex people will also be recognized, doesn't change that.

It is worth noting that the various landmark decisions in the United States on same sex marriage have been unable to rest their arguments on principles of equality alone. Rather, they have had to grapple with the telos of marriage, which has involved clearly defining it and arguing why that is good.

Dr Mayman insists that the marriage equality campaign has addressed marriage as a "social good." "Marriage", she says, "is good for couples, for kids, and for society." I agree, and I concede that I have heard the case made by proponents that same-sex marriage would strengthen the institution. But it would be difficult to dispute that the message of "equality" - not "social good" - has animated the moral dimension of the pro-same-sex marriage campaign.

As I said in my "Voice in the Wilderness" piece, the strategic reasons for this are obvious: by seizing the mantle of our culture's dominant conception of justice they made the case for same-sex marriage self-evident. But in my experience the singular focus on equality is also related to political traditions of the groups who have taken up the cause. Many progressives and leftists, have historically been ambivalent, if not hostile, to institution of marriage itself: a conservative institution, an instrument of patriarchy, organized religion and bourgeois values.

But it's also clear that for marriage equality campaigners the idea that a socially determined value judgement is what has driven the change in attitudes to same-sex marriage can cut both ways: public approval of same-sex marriage as something "good" is at times celebrated; at other times it's deemed irrelevant. But the fact of public approval is critically important both for understanding both the reality of same-sex marriage and the reason why one of the more common objections to it is fallacious - that it will open the gates to other, less acceptable kinds of plural unions.

To be clear, I think it's appalling that gays and lesbians, who in their efforts to have their marriages legally recognized, have been burdened with the task of refuting every other potential kind. They shouldn't have to. The "slippery slope" arguments lack credibility. But I don't believe the ideas that have underpinned the "marriage equality" provided a language to assert precisely why they lack credibility.

It's true, there are sound legal arguments for why the state's marriage laws cannot easily accommodate plural unions compared to the simple change that legal recognition of same-sex marriage would entail. There is also the argument that denying a person's right to enter into a multi-person marriage would not be unequal treatment because they still have the right to enter into a two-person union.

But opponents of same-sex marriage have for years used similar reasoning, rather more odiously, that homosexuals weren't prevented from entering traditional heterosexual marriages. So why do we discriminate against these other types of relationships - relationships whose structure, at least theoretically, may be as vital to the happiness, autonomy and fulfilment for the lives of those who partake in them as any two-person union? As Chief Justice John Roberts put it in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark same-sex marriage ruling:

"Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective 'two' in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not."

What I argued in my piece was that if you are to give a reason for the "two-person element" of marriage, you couldn't avoid making a judgement about what it is and what it should be. And this is what people do. Our rejection of polygamous marriages or other types of plural marriage is not because they are legally complicated or because can choose not to live in polyamorous relationships. Typically, we reject them because we think they are bad or at best, trivial. They are bad for the people in them - especially women - and they are bad for society at large, so we have no interest in granting them status.

This is not a very liberal-sounding sentiment - it may even be wrong - and as former Australian High Court Justice Kirby pointed out in my segment, a time may come when we look at these relationships differently. But that is the whole point: we will have to look at these relationships differently. We will make a value judgment. Just as we, or at least a majority of us, already have made a judgment about the value and importance of same-sex relationships.

It matters for Judges, too. While they try their best to shroud their decisions in mystery that transcends mob opinion, U.S. Chief Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges is so transparently motivated by his agreement with those who desire marriage equality rather than legal principle, that some supporters have found it slightly embarrassing.

But it is this combination of "we" and "value judgment" that exposes an obvious dissonance in the marriage equality advocacy. It's not hard to understand why: if marriage is something society collectively bestows upon certain kinds of relationships, then this undermines the narrative of empowerment that accompanies the struggle for equality. Gays and lesbians are being included in a new definition of an institution rather than demanding what has always been theirs by right.

Dr Mayman embodies this confusion in her piece. Majority support is important and has been achieved because "LGBTI Australians, and their families and friends, have spoken out about how much marriage means to them." I agree, and it's been great to see. However, she concludes her piece by insisting the octogenarian same-sex couple, still waiting for their union to be recognized as a marriage, apparently have nothing to prove to anyone about "the significance of their love and commitment in their lives!" Again, I agree, they don't. But it turns out they've proved it anyway and the cause of same-sex marriage has been greatly advanced as a result. They have been part of this transformational cultural change.

To dispute my claim that legal equality is not primarily what has been at stake with same-sex marriage recognition, she cites three case studies. All address residual legal issues only legal marriage can resolve.

But as all these cases imply, even if formal legal equality could be perfected, it would be no substitute for marriage because of what marriage means. I find it odd that she would reduce the need for same-sex marriage recognition to one of resolving the legal shortcomings of de facto relationships, or the risks associated with foreign travel. It does a disservice to the profound cultural change that has taken place in our societies, which have made same-sex marriage possible - a change that supporters of same-sex marriage ought unambiguously to embrace.

Same-sex marriage is above politics?

My segment also asserted that the denial of same-sex marriage as a profound change to the institution of marriage has at times made the marriage equality advocacy so truculent.

Perhaps the single biggest problem with the marriage equality formulation is that it delegitimises opposition. That prejudice lies at the heart of opposition to equal rights is, for many, axiomatic. So how can opposition, however politely expressed, be anything else? Understanding same-sex marriage recognition in this way has licenced intolerance, and encouraged entirely erroneous analogies with past civil rights injustice such as anti-miscegenation laws.

Indeed, many opponents do regard homosexuality as immoral or sinful. Some are just bigots and, just to clarify, I lay the larger portion of blame for incivility in this debate with these people. But there are many others who support the full suite of equal rights of sexual minorities and even celebrate sexual their differences, yet still oppose same-marriage. For these people, be they genuine conservatives or people of faith, changing the definition of marriage is to change what it is.

Sometimes they formulate their views in ways that seem unsophisticated: marriage is between a man and woman, always has been, and you don't change things that have worked this well for this long. I disagree. But over time, I've come to find what you might call this conservative intuition no less sophisticated than the one that, for me, made the justice of same-sex marriage self-evident.

I've tried to take their concerns seriously, but, at least in my experience, progressives too often believe they don't have to. There is often a whiff of arrogance about this because they know that in the end they will win this fight - indeed, that history itself is on their side. But this doesn't mean conservatives don't have a case that deserves to be addressed.

Over time, marriage has changed in various ways. Many conservatives maintain that it is more recent changes following sexual revolution that has done the real damage to marriage. But it is difficult to dispute that for millennia it has been understood as a union of sexual difference. Some cleave to this ideal, and, as theologian John Milbank puts it, find something "monstrous about the state even claiming to have the power by law to change the definition of a natural and cultural reality which has historically preceded the existence of the state itself."

But it has changed, at least in parts of the world, and it will no doubt change here some time soon. The state has taken over the institution of marriage and its role administering its legal obligations and responsibilities are indispensable. The religious and conservative will have to console themselves with hope that the protection of religious liberties - another fundamental right - will be secured in any amendment to the Marriage Act. For Dr Mayman, changing the definition is really no big deal. She dismisses any traditional features of marriage that some people still value as so much "historical baggage".

There are also ethical reservations associated with various ways children can be conceived that are accompanying rapid cultural change: such as the technologisation of childbirth, perhaps best articulated by Frank Brennan - a supporter of secular same-sex marriage. But Dr Mayman feels that these can apparently be brushed aside because young people understand what contemporary marriage means.

Making civil same-sex marriage legal

The intolerance to opposition among same-sex marriage supporters was most emphatically demonstrated by the debate over how change should be achieved. Dr Mayman accuses me of blaming the marriage equality campaign for the failure of the Australian parliament to change the law. I did not. Nor do I regard the "shenanigans" around a plebiscite as much more than spoiling tactics.

What I dispute is that a plebiscite was somehow inappropriate to decide the question. Expensive? Certainly. Unnecessary? For sure. Dreamed up by Tony Abbott and his like for reasons of political expediency? Definitely. But wrong?

It's simply not obvious how any society should adjudicate a decision as profound as changing the definition of marriage. Different countries have taken different approaches for different reasons. The United States has taken a judicial path, probably the least satisfactory of all because it has left many bitter that a fuller democratic conversation has been pre-empted. Again, U.S. Chief Justice Roberts:

"however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause. And they lose this just when the winds of change were freshening at their backs"

I supported a parliamentary solution, but a plebiscite was on the table. I figured that if polling suggested that same-sex marriage has been validated by society at large, why not test that validation through a more formal democratic exercise? It was not binding, but a parliamentary majority for change following the vote was all but assured and had the advantage of bringing an enhanced democratic legitimacy to the outcome.

The marriage equality campaign, the Labor Party, the Greens and others had the opportunity to call the coalition's bluff and bring it on. Had they done so, London to a brick, state sanctioned same-sex marriage would be a reality now.

My piece criticised Michael Kirby's argument against a plebiscite: that because same-sex marriage was a question of equality it should not be put to a public vote. This became the prevailing line of reasoning among same-sex marriage supporters. There was even the suggestion by some that the plebiscite itself was discriminatory. In the leftish circles I move in, Michael Kirby is regarded as something of a progressive demigod; if he says something, then the logic must be unassailable. But he is not a philosopher king. In this instance, I think he was spouting nonsense.

There was another, and possibly decisive, reason that I did not previously address, that is worthy of deeper consideration: that genuine public debate would bring out the worst elements among same-sex marriage opponents causing emotional distress to people - especially young people - in the LGBTI community. These concerns are genuine and important and an effort has been made to make them evidence based - even if the assertion by some that gay teenagers would commit suicide over a plebiscite had a funk of emotional blackmail about it. However, my principle objection would be that, as with Kirby's argument, these concerns represented another attempt by the marriage-equality campaign to situate the issue above politics. It isn't. And in a democracy the bar for treating any issue as above politics should be set very high.

Progressives ought to defend the primacy of politics at every opportunity. The slippery slope that they ought to be worried about is the one symbolized by those dreadful social media memes I referred to earlier: They are a bit funny, but apply the principles to something you don't agree with and you've got big problems. It speaks a politics of values-neutrality, where everything is simply reduced to preferences and all preferences are legitimate, no matter how base.

I have little time for a conservatism that defers unreflectively to customs and tradition, but they have a good radar for detecting nihilistic elements of particular lines of reasoning. We can learn from then, even if we don't let them have their way. Some traditions are worth holding onto. To dismiss their case is not merely disrespectful, it might be dangerous. As Crikey's correspondent at large, Guy Rundle, warns: "to presume that such a position is unthinkable or incoherent, is simply to presume that liberalism of a certain type is the whole of politics."

Why does any of this matter?

It has occurred to me there is something absurd about two supporters of same-sex marriage splitting hairs as to why it's a good thing. And why does the rationale matter if we all want the same outcome? Good things can happen for unsound reasons and there have been loads offered for same-sex marriage - that it will be "good for business" being perhaps the most egregious example.

One answer would be that the same-sex marriage debate is just one way of exploring the broader crisis of values, and some of the ways we can respond: do we double down on our own ideals and values, or reflect a little on why they aren't universally persuasive. As most of my conversations occur in the progressive echo-chamber I thought it useful to take the latter approach.

I'm sorry I created an impression that I "shifted the blame" for the failure of marriage equality and placed it at the feet of those who desire it most. But the tone of our public discussion matters and progressives need to own some of the blame.

We should listen carefully to the other side, think harder about the foundations of their political instincts and, paradoxically for progressives, be a little more broadminded. We like to compare unfavourably the insularity of conservatives with our superior cosmopolitanism. But we are routinely blind to our own parochialism.

Unfortunately, this parochialism is on stark display in Dr Mayman's piece: "Every nation understands a marriage certificate." An astonishing statement given that most of the world, unfortunately, will not recognize hers. "Yay for Finland, and yay for Slovenia," she delights, citing the latest states to make same-sex marriage law. Does it matter at all that the prospects for similar reforms in India and China are so remote that it is questionable whether they may ever happen?

Or does Dr Mayman make the same error as other progressives in believing that the passage from tradition to liberal modernity is inevitable? Marriage equality has framed the same-sex marriage reform in the small number of countries where it exists. Will the rhetoric of rights, freedoms and individual choice carry the day for same-sex marriage in the rest of the world? We shall have to wait and see.
Brendan Wynter is a former high school English and history teacher who has worked as a speechwriter for a variety of government agencies both in Australia and abroad. He currently lives in Melbourne where he divides his time between his private speechwriting consultancy and caring for his infant son.

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Why Supporters of Same-Sex Marriage Need Better Arguments

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Brendan Wynter lives in Melbourne, where he divides his time between his private speechwriting consultancy and caring for his infant son. Recently I was the contributing "Voice in the Wilderness" on RN's God Forbid program - a segment dedicated, at least nominally, to opinions that receive less frequent coverage in the mainstream media.