Properly "Big X" refers to the biggest players in the X industry, particularly with regard to trade groups and lobbying. It's useful because often this section of the industry will have unique qualities compared to the industry as a whole or other industries (such as how much they spend on lobbying, how much innovation they are responsible for, etc)
It is true that people will often use it as a lazy and fallacious way of vilifying but please note this is not exclusively a progressive phenomenon. Many of these groups lobby for things like govt subsidies, laws which restrict personal freedoms in ways that help their industry, etc...many conservatives aren't thrilled with such behavior.
In a brief non scientific survey of a few subreddits (r/libertarian, r/socialism, etc) phrases like "big oil" appear roughly comparably.
People on both ends of the political spectrum are (perhaps rightly) displeased with some of the actions of such groups and vilify them - they just disagree about what the root cause is and how to prevent such behavior.
The fallacy comes in when people use some particular actions of some players in an industry to invalidate everything that comes out of it. (such as implying that anything produced by a startup is ipso facto healthier than something produced by a large pharmaceutical company)
Keep in mind this is Philadelphia, which although it's improving has historically had a pretty high level of gun violence and homicide. It's usually not the worst city in this regard (New Orleans or Detroit has had that distinction lately) but it's generally the worst among the large cities; for comparison in 2010 Philly had several times more homicides per 100,000 people than NYC (19.6 vs 6.4), and beat out Chicago (15.2) by a few points.
Probably more importantly these are not just "inner city kids". Nearly all of them are African American which means they are less likely to enroll in/graduate college overall; and they are all the children of parents who were addicted to crack at some point (and probably continued to struggle with it). That puts them at even more of a disadvantage.
> The problem arises that the legality of marriage was designed around traditional families.
This premise is debatable, but assuming it is true it's still not a particularly strong argument. The law was designed to be flexible and evolve with society's needs and desires.
Allowing gay marriage is a minor adjustment of what we in the US currently understand marriage to be - not a "changing of the very definition". If we were talking about polygamy that would be a much stronger case.
Society encourages and allows marriages for a variety of reasons - involving tradition, encouraging general stability, families, etc. It also has a certain understanding of marriage - a partnership between two people. Homosexual marriage vis a vis heterosexual marriage is the same in all these respects in practical terms.
To be clear, there are difference in say how gay couples reproduce (in general)...but there are differences in how heterosexual marriages reproduce too. The supposed fundamental "differences" in gay couples are already tolerated (or entirely unproblematic) in the hetero population so banning gay marriages as a means to discourage them is not a valid argument. It's an artificial distinction.
Let's be honest - opposition to gay marriage is based on religion, ignorance, or personal aesthetics. Hey, that's fine - we're all entitled to our beliefs ...but let's be explicit and honest about it instead of kidding ourselves and each other.
If you really do want to stick to this farce, then at least be consistent and start demanding people must pass fertility and mental health exams before they can be married - to prove that they can produce children and raise them in a healthy environment.
You arguments are good but not airtight. I'll pick out the ones I disagree with.
> To be clear, there are difference in say how gay couples reproduce
Straight couples can reproduce with their spouse - gays cannot. That's not just a difference, but a complete opposite.
>Let's be honest - opposition to gay marriage is based on religion, ignorance, or personal aesthetics.
I agree that most people oppose gay marriage because of religion, but religion may have underlying logical reasoning for it. I don't think ignorance/personal aesthetics is a reason, because if someone is intuitively disgusted by two males sodomizing, there may be a biological reason for it. Ignorance is better than false beliefs.
The reason I'm against gay marriage is that I don't want the definition to change, and I don't want my children having gay propaganda pushed on them. That's it. These are good reasons in my opinion.
> Straight couples can reproduce with their spouse - gays cannot. That's not just a difference, but a complete opposite.
Not really one relevant to much of the legality around marriage. About the only thing it even remotely connects to is the presumption of paternity (the default assignment of legal parental responsibility to the spouse of the biological mother of any child born during the marriage.) And, even then, its not really a problem. There are two different forms of the presumption, and which is adopted varies by jursidiction.
Rebuttable: In this model, the concept of rights and responsibility of biological parents as preeminent is maintained, but the spouse is presumptively assigned parental rights and responsibility, but this can be reversed if there is evidence that the spouse is not the parent. Obviously, in the case of same sex marriage, this is resolved simply, as the evidence is readily available to rebut the presumption in all cases.
Conclusive: This model is based on the priority of the marital relationship over biological parenthood for raising children, and in jurisdictions adopting this this model the spouse of the biological mother is conclusively assigned parental rights and responsibility with regard to any children born during the marriage. Obviously, there works just fine in same-sex marriage.
So, the same-sex-couples cannot reproduce with their spouse thing is a difference, but not one which seems especially problematic with regard to the legalities around marraige.
> The reason I'm against gay marriage is that I don't want the definition to change
That's not much of a reason.
Why do you think the current definition of marriage, the result of continuous change over an extended period of time, is so perfect that it should not continue to change?
> and I don't want my children having gay propaganda pushed on them.
What does that have to do with equal marriage one way or the other? You think that continuing to deny equal marriage is going to make gay rights advocates less vocal and omnipresent?
> Straight couples can reproduce with their spouse - gays cannot. That's not just a difference, but a complete opposite.
You're just stating explicitly the implicit argument I was refuting, but ok:
The difference is immaterial for our purposes. The fact that one or both parents in a family do not have a biological link to their children is irrelevant. It's a curiosity of genetics that has little-to-nothing to do with how a family functions on a social level, which is the level marriage laws operate on.
Are we banning adoptions and step-children now? Society has no reason to outlaw couples that can't reproduce together. Homosexuals can adopt, they can use surrogates, they can have children from previous marriages (ended in divorce, or death, etc). As long as we're think-of-the-children-ing it would be better all around to let those children grow up in families if possible.
More importantly, that's not a difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples - it's a difference between couples. Many straight people can not or will not reproduce with their spouse either - are we going to ban marriages between infertile people? Force people to have children?
The point is this: if you pick at random a married gay couple...and then pick at random a married straight couple....the difference between them will be no greater than the difference that we already tolerate between heterosexual couples. Therefore, you cannot argue that we must ban gay marriage on the basis of preventing some problematic aspect of gay marriage - any "problem" gay marriage is one heterosexual marriage also has. It's a largely artificial distinction. If not being able to have children together is SUCH a big deal, then argue against that and let gay couples be banned under that banner.
If you're going to ban it on the basis that a gay couple is statistically much more likely to have quality X, then quality X must be a VERY serious thing. Infertility is not serious enough to qualify.
Note too this situation may change. The science of reproduction is ever evolving and changing.
> These are good reasons in my opinion.
> is that I don't want the definition to change
This is either silly and arbitrary, or begging the question.
You don't want it to change why? Because you believe laws should never change? You're afraid of all the paper we'll waste printing out new forms? You don't want to have to memorize new legislation?
No, let's be honest - you don't want it to change because you don't agree with the proposed change. That's fine...but just state that instead of coming up with some silly dodge like "I don't want the definition to change".
> I don't want my children having gay propaganda pushed on them
Here I suspect is your most honest; you are against it because you don't like homosexuality. Fine, that's your right to feel that way. However you should just be honest with yourself and others and admit that, instead of providing silly and flimsy rationalizations which fall apart under any scrutiny.
> not that he hadn't broken it so as to have a pardon
Reasoning I find confusing. A pardon is by definition something given to people convicted of breaking the law. It can be and is sometimes used as a relief for people who have been -wrongly- convicted if there is no other mechanism (or just because it's easier), but that's not implied or required.
The argument would be that he wasn't wrongly convicted.
By modern standards it's obviously a stupid, unjust and immoral law that he was convicted under; but if he was correctly found guilty under the laws of the time, then it was a sound conviction.
Pardons are a general tool to forgive (in several senses) a crime. If you look at the history of pardons in the US for example, you'll find examples ranging from people who were wrongly convicted, to people who got one as a reward for cooperating in investigations, to people who simply had powerful friends.
Which is why I find that reasoning confusing - when you pardon someone, you just do it... and if you care to give a reason you can.
Perhaps it's different in the UK? Is this some limitation on the powers of the House of Lords?
'It is the standard policy of the Government to only grant pardons to those who are considered "morally" innocent of the offence, as opposed to those who may have been wrongly convicted by a misapplication of the law.'
It also mentions that in 1996 there was a pardon given as a "reward for information".
> you're putting speed bumps in the paths of your thoughts.
I would argue that for many of the people I have met in my life, this would be a good thing. I don't we need to coddle each other all the time, but neither is the opposite workable or desirable - a little consideration is important.
> If a driver appears to be drunk, how is that a random stop?
They're not stopping drivers who "appear to be drunk" - that's the point. They are allowed (supposedly, IANAL) to set up a checkpoint to stop every car (effectively a random stop) that passes by to see if the driver is intoxicated, or check to see that they are not in the country illegally.
They're not allowed to check for other crimes without probable cause though. They can't set up a check point to say drug possession or tax evasion, though if you are at a DUI checkpoint I believe you may somehow give them probable cause to check for those things.
For stuff like the example where you know you will be reusing the command, it's better to use an alias or script. Even if it's just a command you plan to run in a couple times in a row you can add a temporay alias with: alias foo = "!!" - that way you don't have to hit ctrl+r each time.
Still, it's a good tip in terms of adding comments to unusual/confusing commands so when you go through your history you're not like "wtf was I doing here?" or if you unexpectedly need to recall it.
If anyone wants to delve more into the workings of a JS VM, I've found the code of Higgs (https://github.com/maximecb/Higgs) to be very straightforward and readable. The interpreter and JIT are written in D and much of the run-time is written in JS. It's a successor to the Tachyon project mentioned in that post.
It is true that people will often use it as a lazy and fallacious way of vilifying but please note this is not exclusively a progressive phenomenon. Many of these groups lobby for things like govt subsidies, laws which restrict personal freedoms in ways that help their industry, etc...many conservatives aren't thrilled with such behavior.
In a brief non scientific survey of a few subreddits (r/libertarian, r/socialism, etc) phrases like "big oil" appear roughly comparably.
People on both ends of the political spectrum are (perhaps rightly) displeased with some of the actions of such groups and vilify them - they just disagree about what the root cause is and how to prevent such behavior.
The fallacy comes in when people use some particular actions of some players in an industry to invalidate everything that comes out of it. (such as implying that anything produced by a startup is ipso facto healthier than something produced by a large pharmaceutical company)