Civil Unions, Climate Change and bogus arguments

The Hawai'i Legislature's House Bill 444 would grant to same-sex couples the rights currently associated with marriage. It is unlike the climate change debate in every way but this: some of the arguments abandon logic and honest debate.You see this a lot in public debate. Folks who have honest disagreements begin to toss everything but the kitchen sink at the opposing side, presumably in hope that some of it scores points.

One assumes that the fundamental issue on the civil union issue is this: Should society continue to limit special recognition and certain tax and estate planning benefits to traditional male-female formalized marriages; or should those privileges also be afforded to non-traditional unions—notably same-sex ones.Seems simple—I believe it ought to be this way; or I believe it ought to be that way.

But folks are desperately cobbling together arguments to “logically” support their positions.My favorite—you hear this a lot in talk radio—is to say the issue has already been decided—in the 1998 constitutional amendment election. That's been a common complaint of opponents of Bill 444.Actually, anyone who reads the constitutional amendment recognizes that it didn't decide anything.What the amendment did was grant the Legislature the authority to restrict marriage to members of the opposite sex.

It didn't resolve the issue, and it didn't mandate that the Legislature do so.Or even this, which we heard last night: There have been non-anthropogenic spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels before the Industrial Revolution, so this one isn't caused by humans, either. Which is vaguely analogous to saying: Lots of cats die of feline leukemia, so the cat, lying there under the wheel of a car, must have died of feline leukemia too.