Via his Twitter account, President Obama declared the DOMA ruling from the Supreme Court to be a historic step forward for marriage equality. Then he closed his tweet with the hashtag #LoveIsLove.
Really? Is all love equal? Is love for a pet the same as love for a husband? Is love for pizza the same as love for a wife?
In this tweet, President Obama has subtly declared that marriage is nothing more than love. By his logic, not only should same-sex couples be allowed to get married, but other groups as well. As long as they love each other, this logic would allow for polygamous, polyamorous, and incestuous marriage.
Is all love really love, Mr. President?
Ethics as Worship 
When I saw that hashtag, I couldn’t help but point out it’s redundancy. It was like saying pizza is pizza.
Now that I’ve seen it on a deeper level, I see it’s an even more asinine statement.
Thanks for sharing. Thats the SAME thing I said, and I constantly show my mother your blogs, because they are always the correct christian view point. I wish more Christians would really open the eyes and see whats wrong is wrong…
Keep up the great work, I found out about you through one of my Ethic Leadership teachers.
“By his logic, not only should same-sex couples be allowed to get married, but other groups as well. As long as they love each other, this logic would allow for polygamous, polyamorous, and incestuous marriage.”
That’s YOUR logic. Not his. Putting words in others’ mouths is not very Christian.
I’m just drawing out the logical conclusion of his statement. This is probably why Twitter is a terrible place to make policy statements and cultural commentary. But that was his choice. What do you think his logic was with the statement “love is love”?
#LoveisLove is nothing more than an internet meme intended to point out that the love between two consenting adults of the same sex is no different from the love between two people of different sexes. By no means must we jump to hasty conclusions that he (Obama) also used it to refer to polygamous, polyamorous, and incestuous marriage as you are implying. And worse, to love for pets and pizza, that’s plain ridiculous and distracts from the core of the discussion.
If you accuse me of putting words in his mouth, then you are doing the same. Did Mr. Obama define his use of the hashtag? Has he clearly articulated his opposition to polygamy? How does he define love anyway? Let’s be fair. If I can’t draw out logical conclusions, then neither can you.
“If you accuse me of putting words in his mouth, then you are doing the same.” – nope. Don’t accuse me of putting words in his mouth because I never did that. Read again:
“By no means must we jump to hasty conclusions that he (Obama) also used it to refer to polygamous, polyamorous, and incestuous marriage as you are implying. And worse, to love for pets and pizza, that’s plain ridiculous and distracts from the core of the discussion.”
I never said what he meant or what his definitions were. I just said that you should not make assumptions on what he meant or what his definitions were.
“Did Mr. Obama define his use of the hashtag? Has he clearly articulated his opposition to polygamy? How does he define love anyway?”
EXACTLY! That is why you can’t make those assumptions. If you make assumptions, you have the burden of proof. If you accuse him to be in favor of polygamy and whatnot, you should present evidence to support your claim.
“Let’s be fair. If I can’t draw out logical conclusions, then neither can you.”
And I never did. I don’t know what definitions he had in mind but that hashtag #LoveisLove has been around even before he used it. That hashtag already had a definition associated with it. And that definition has nothing to do with polyamory, polygamy, and incest.
Shad, you said, “#LoveisLove is nothing more than an internet meme intended to point out that the love between two consenting adults of the same sex is no different from the love between two people of different sexes.” In making this statement, you defined (in your opinion) what President Obama said. However, he said no such thing. He did not offer that explanation. Therefore, you put words in his mouth.
You claim the hashtag has a prior definition. Can you point us to the hashtag dictionary? I see hashtags all the time that people use in different ways. the bigger problem with that hashtag in particular is that it does not define love. What is love? Is it an emotion? Is it action? Does it change? How long does it last? What is the object of love? Are there only certain acceptable objects of love? Since you claim to know the definition of the hashtag, then can you answer this series of questions? Then can you confirm that President Obama directly referenced this definition?
Ugh, never mind. I give up. You win. Polygamy, polyamory, and incestuous marriage will come storming in through that door any day now. Just like what happened in the more than 10 countries in the world that already have marriage equality (not!). I’ll check in on you when that time comes. But don’t hold your breath.
And while you’re worrying, the fact remains that hundreds of couples out there will become happier and their happiness will hurt you in ZERO ways. And your worrying shall hurt them also in ZERO ways because if you attempt to hurt them, that is against Christian teachings and that would make you a big hypocrite but I trust you are higher than that.
Closing this window now.
#slipperyslopefallacy
#strawmanfallacy
#I_should_not_have_given_this_little_narrow-minded_ethics_professor_attention_in_the_first_place
Shad, I am sorry you feel this way. I guess I am narrow-minded, but we all are in a way. We all accept some things as true and others as false. I appear narrow-minded to you on this issue. But you are also narrow-minded because you don’t accept what I say. In fact, being narrow-minded is a good thing because it means we have considered multiple possibilities for the answer and ruled out some of them (or even all but one).
I should have posted links to these articles before now since you may not come back. But here are 2 articles by proponents of polygamy who based on the logic of the same-sex marriage cases. In fact, the lawsuit pending in federal court in Utah has the same attorney who just argued the DOMA case before the Supreme Court.
Jillian Keenan, “Legalize Polygamy! No. I am not kidding.” Slate, April 15, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/04/legalize_polygamy_marriage_equality_for_all.html
Jim Dalrymple, II, “Utah polygamists celebrate, but will rulings help them?” Salt Lake Tribune, June 26, 2013. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56515337-78/marriage-darger-polygamy-case.html.csp