- Feb 20, 2007
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I'm going to disagree with you slightly. While I agree that straw man claims are overused here and often wrongly applied, I don't think this is always the case in the example you mention.
There are at least two people here that claim that marriage is solely about procreation, therefore same-sex couples cannot marry since they cannot procreate -- thus creating the strawman, knocking it down, and claiming victory. And they do it over and over and over no matter how many times people show that, even using their own arguments, that marriage is not solely about procreation.
I'm sorry, I still disagree with you. Above, you have not described a straw man argument. What those people are doing is simply basing their argument on a premise with which you disagree. That is not, in itself, fallacious. If they assume that the two of you accept this premise, then they are guilty of assuming a controversial premise and may even be engaging in a bit of circular reasoning. But they are not committing the straw man fallacy.
Suppose they accused you of arguing both that marriage is, by definition, for the purpose of spouses procreating together, and also that same-sex couples can be marriedand then pointed out that this is self-contradictorythen that would be an example of a straw man fallacy. But unless they attribute a weak argument to you, there is no straw man.
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