Not quite sure how sexual orientation and race are different.

Please inform me.

Because one is a choice.

Whether or not it's right or wrong is a whole different matter. I called bullshit on the whole "born that way" thing the first time I heard it.

They do have horrible business practices. That's the whole point.

They deliberately open Starbucks stores in areas with a thriving independent coffee shop, then they go after it with all the money they have behind them and get it shut down. (No indie coffee shop can compete when Starbucks is suddenly offering $1 lattes for months on end and free muffins etc.).

In the area I used to live in LA for instance, the main street had 12 coffee shops. One Starbucks and 11 independent shops. Then Starbucks opened another branch. Then they bought three of the independent coffee shops, and then shut them down. Then they went after all the other indie cafes. As far as I know, that amazing street that was a community of people that went to indie coffee shops every day for hours to hang out and talk with their friends and supporting many many employees along the way, btw) now has only 4 coffee shops. Two Starbucks and two independents who are hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

They do this all over the country, and have now even gone so far as to open their own 'indie coffee shops' with the Starbucks name nowhere in sight, to con people into thinking they're supporting an indie coffee shop.

Disgusting company. Disgusting management. So, yeah, there is a good reason why many people won't set foot there.

It's called the Wal-Mart style of doing business. Go after your competitors with one goal only -- to close every single one of them down, so you're the only choice left.

They've tried it in Bangkok, but fortunately, Thais aren't so stupid or so selfish as to give up the cafes they loved before for a free muffin or a cheap latte, though they'll drink coffee at Starbucks, they still frequent the cafes they went to before. Indie coffee shops are thriving in Bangkok, in the US, in many places, they've completely gone out of business.

Oh, so you chose to be straight? Seen any attractive guys recently?

Ah, now I see what you're saying. Sorry, but that makes very little sense.

Like I said, marriage contracts have been along since forever and are used extensively. People can dictate what their marriage will be like to a significant extent. But there are certain things that you cannot contract about (unenforceable in law). That's so for a good reason, because marriage grants very specific types of sensitive rights.
Sure it might be great for some to be able to define their marriages to the acutest of details, but what you don't understand is that in marriage there is hardly ever a balance of bargaining power. Nor is marriage necessarily a rational thing into which people enter with a rational mindset. That's where family law comes in. It is not there to fuck people out of their X Amendment rights or free choice or whatnot - it is there to protect vulnerable parties and in a case of divorce you will 99% of the time have at least one party that is vulnerable.
Saying that you don't need state intervention in marriage makes even less sense than saying that we don't need consumer protection laws.

For example, I don't know what the legal test in the US is for children of divorced parents, but I think it's the 'best interests of the child' test in the UK (I didn't study divorce). The potential future of the child from a divorced family is not something that should have been contractually predetermined.

So no, terrible idea.

I suspect that it makes little sense to you because you are reasoning within (what seems to me to be a typical modern European) perspective that your government grants your rights to you and should decide what is best for you.

Yes, a contractual framework for marriage created by the state and based on tradition has existed for some time. Irrelevant.

To quote my earlier post:

"All provisions would of course have to be legal; for example, one couldn't stipulate the death of the spouse in cases of infidelity."

Bargaining power within the marriage itself (a private matter), or bargaining power entering into a marriage? One has the ultimate bargaining power when entering into a marriage: The ability to say no.

Currently, we also have the ability to create prenuptual agreements. In fact, the contract view is similar in nature to prenup agreements but also encompasses the ability to negotiate the structure of the marriage itself (monogamous, polygamous, etc). It's not as outlandish as it likely seems to you.

Well, gods forbid we try to change that. ;-)

What you don't seem to be able to wrap your head around is that current family and marriage law dictate a certain family structure (monogamy between a man and a woman, the nuclear family, etc). The *reason* that you have to fight for the right to have a homosexual marriage is that the government holds the power to define marriage and family and has not included gays in that defintion. You propose merely changing the defintion to suit your goals; I propose stripping that power of definition itself from the government.

The contract view does not equate to a total lack of government involvement; rather, it renders the government an adjucator of the marriage contract (as it is with any other voluntary contract) when necessary rather than the architect of the contract.

Children are always a sticky issue whether discussing marriage, legalization of drugs, etc. But:

Regardless of any provision of the marriage contract, the state could always intervene on behalf of the child in cases of a dangerous environment, unstable parent, etc.

Well, I won't likely argue the point much more than I have anyways. I put it out there as food for thought and followed up on it as a means to pass a notably slow weekend at work. I start my days off in a less than two hours, so that'll be that. ;-)

I find it interesting that you bring nationality into this. The average citizen of the EU has infinitely more civil rights under what you seem to consider a very interventionist "continent," than your counterpart in the US - in the "land of the free." More state control does not equate a less liberal society. In fact, the EU has since its inception always been working towards more and more consumer and civil rights for its citizens. Many European countries are some of the most liberal places in the world in which any form of government control is strongly scrutinised and often rejected. I cannot say the same for the US.
So our respective backgrounds have very little to do with this.

I'm not really going to comment on your response on bargaining power of spouses. I highly recommend (if you wish to uphold those viewpoints of yours) that you diversify them with some background on elementary family law. I recommend Michael Freeman (I read medical law under him) and he's written a number of books on the subject (over 60), i.e. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Family-Law-Michael-Freeman/dp/0421901705

As for the structure of the marriage you cited nuclear family and mono/polygamy. I mean... I didn't know what a 'nuclear family' was so looked it up on wikipedia.
"In the UK, the number of nuclear families fell from 39% of all households in 1968 to 28% in 1992." So yeah, it's quite an alien concept in Europe, which I already said has a fairly liberal society. I guess the fact that gay marriage is legal in many European countries (and civil partnership in others) is a testament to the fact that around here no-one cares about 'nuclear families,' yet of course no-one is prohibited from having one.
As far as polygamous marriage, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean having multiple sexual partners in a marriage, or do you mean being married to a number of partners at the same time? The former is perfectly legal here in Europe. The latter isn't (and even then, it is TECHNICALLY possible to make it work). I don't necessarily have anything against the concept of being married to a number of people at the same time, but I don't see the point in it. And this is coming from someone who has had a number of polygamous relationships.
But ok, you want polygamous marriage. Fair enough. Might be difficult to make it work legally (a whole bunch of additional jurisprudence would be required) but then again there are plenty of countries that are already doing it (Muslim countries, to an extent). But I don't see this as a convincing argument for completely privitising the concept of marriage.

Yeah children are always a sticky issue, but so is marriage and that is why we have state control, which is what you don't seem "to be able to wrap your head around." I know that you believe the contrary, but the state is not around "to control you" on such issues (ok, maybe more in America than around here) but it's there to protect people. It is there to protect vulnerable parties (divorced wives are as much of a sensitive topic as children are).

Honestly, if you're against state control I'd recommend you to visit Europe once. I think you'll find it an agreeable place.

I brought it up only because I find it to be an interesting unspoken divide I see occur in many discussions between Americans and Europeans.

Also, bear in mind that I did not make any sort of blanket claim that the current state of American politics and law is any better than that of Europe (both are fucked). We (the United States) have drifted far from our foundations. I was speaking more to the basic philosophies at work. Anyway, let's not turn this into a national pissing match. I could bring up France banning Muslim headwraps in schools, lack of what we consider true freedom of speech, then you could bring up countless things that we're doing wrong, etc. That's not where I wanted to go here.

Agree to disagree. Apologies if I came off in the wrong manner. I get off work in a matter of minutes, so that's it for me for now. :-)

No worries, let's settle it at that and have a lovely holiday!

Bullshit. I don't know what your sexual preference is, but I'll guess straight based on your ignorance. How about you go out and for a few months choose to be gay. Fall in love with a member of the same sex, have hot steamy sex with them and love every moment of it. Then you can break up with them after having been with them for a while and go back to being straight eliminating all feeling for your previous lover instantaneously and once again be back to be attracted to the opposite sex with no attraction to the same.
Good luck with that.

Gosh, I'd better stop hanging around all of my bi/lesbian friends on Facebook, lest they infect me with their gay rays.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter. (I'm guessiing the word "capitalism" will be a turn-off for some, but meh upon you.)
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/capitalism-institute/2012/jul/26/ban-chick-fil-a/

Although I have some reservations on gay marriage and the flamboyant, "in-your-face" aspects gay lifestyle, (and as a straight guy, isn't it okay to be a little uncomfortable, even if you're courteous?), neither side is really my "fight", but homosexuals certainly still regular people that deserve respect and treated as, well, regular peeps.

Everyone should get a civil union. If you want to marry then it's a private ceremony that's none of the public's business. Civil unions should be open to homosexual pairings.

To paraphrase my view on gay marriage from another thread maybe a year back:

A Caucasian / Middle Eastern atheist and a black / oriental Jew can get "married" and experience the legal and civil rights that come with it, but two Protestant men of strong faith can't?

As to the boycott, well, that's what you get when you express your opinions under the auspices of free speech: people may react, both positively and negatively, with their own expressions of free speech. Free-ish market and free speech at work.

Oligarchy <> Capitalism
State-run businesses <> Capitalism
Corruption <> Capitalism

Furthermore, clear and undisputed ownership is an essential part of capitalism.

I guess what I'm reacting to here is that people in this thread seem to be slinging terms around without regard for the actual definition. As far as I understand it, China is definitely laissez faire about any and all kinds of laws, but that doesn't make them capitalist.

I never said China wasn't moving towards a market-focused economy, but there isn't really a free property market or capitalism in any major sense. The term state capitalism might apply, but that's really just another term for rule-by-rich-thugs (i.e., oligarchy). Which again, isn't capitalism. There's a ton of ways to organize an economy that aren't socialist or capitalist. Corporatism sounds like it works too, if you include the government as another corporation.

EDIT: To shrink the post.