Miscommunications

I was a communications major in college. No, not mass communications, but rather theories of, etc. I learned about ethics, persuasion, inter-cultural, inter-personal communication. One thing that has remained with me since those long gone days, is that it is EXTREMELY easy to miscommunicate. It is far easer to miscommunicate than it is to have your listener understand exactly what you're saying.

My lover hates when I ask her for empathic listening. That's when I ask for a reinterpretation of what I just informed her, to make sure that she understood the nuances as well as the overall meaning. Recently, I've stopped asking her for that due to her ire, but I'm resuming. I'm finding that I need to feel that I'm being understood. But I digress.

I've been reading this fascinating forum in Nanowrimo and what I'm realizing is that people are arguing and debating but nothing is defined. What do I mean by that? I used to work on contracts. I used to read them for a living and occasionally I wrote them. The thing about a contract is, definitions are NEVER assumed, they are always provided.

This forum topic is about gay marriage. One lone man, Mysterious Stranger, has decided to answer a bunch of question that the pro-gay marriage people are throwing out. He is a young Christian man with a wife and four kids in Oregon. Mysterious Stranger's responses to this onslaught of questions have been thoughtful, respectful and well said. As a result, a few of his questioners are making sure this topic remains bile-free and a nice exchange of ideas. While neither side have been able to convince the other, the true winners are the readers of this forum topic.

However, given all that, the one thing I find about that topic is that no definitions have been made. They all talk about marriage as if they all know what marriage is about. I suspect Mysterious Stranger is talking about the spiritual side of marriage, the one blessed by churches. Many gays, including myself, would rather drive spikes into their eyes then be wedded in a church. (I think this is something religious folks don't seem to understand.) There are two definitions to marriage - a legal one and a religious one.

I also think a definition of consenting adults should be added. (examples of well if we let gays, where do we stop, pedophiles? Incest?).

With so many misconceptions about, no wonder it was easy to exploit the fear.

I want to ask Christians, what is it that makes their wedding vows/marriage legitimate in their eyes. Is it because they have a slip of paper in their hands by the government? Or is it because they were blessed by their church? Is it both? See, if both, then they need to understand that by not having the blessing of the church, then in their eyes, anyone getting married outside of the church isn't legimate anyway, so why inflict their views on someone else?

If it's the slip of paper in their hands, then they need to understand that laws can't be as picky as churches. Laws are meant for the common denominator and shouldn't discriminate. Laws are not meant to contradict other laws. Laws are also trying to prevent bad stuff happening later. There are laws against incest because children produced from such unions are often genetically malformed.

Hmm, given that, I'm not sure at some point in the far future if child prevention can be 100%, that incest will not become legal.

Anyway, the great social experiment that is America has been to see if people can live UP to ideals, not down to commonality. See, the more the government has to step in and make you walk the line, the more unAmerican we become.

Filed under Reveries & Paranoias and Scary Gay Stuff.