I agree. Especially since it was liberal white guilt that elected the empty suit driving the country to socialist ruin :wink:
The government has no religious sacraments. This part if the issue is 100% irrelevant to the argument of whether or not gays should be allowed to be married. To the government, marriage is a contract, nothing more. Now, if you want to say that forcing a particular church to perform a wedding between two people of the same sex is wrong, I would agree. But there is no reason why a same sex couple shouldn't be able to go to the local city hall and have a justice of the peace issue them the same marriage license that anyone else gets. When it comes to making laws, offending a religious group is 100% irrelevant. In your church maybe. This argument is one of the biggest loads of shit ever. It's a cover for trying to appear as though you support equal rights while in reality denying them. It's the exact same thing as separate but equal. The argument contradicts itself as well. The argument is that if the rights are the same the word doesn't matter... unless the word is marriage. Then, for some reason, it matters a lot. My question for all the people against allowing gays to be married on these grounds never gets answered... how does it possibly affect you in any way? What difference does it make to you whether or not somebody else uses a word to describe themselves?
^The funny thing is that Hobbes tried to invoke the semantics argument, when it is in fact, the bigots getting hung up on the semantics.
Exactly. They make the claim that "it's only a word, everything else is the same". Well, if it really is only a word, why do they care?
This is only a controversial debate because people are impatient to the Constitutional process. But it's working exactly as it should, and at the proper pace. It just seems so much more clear cut that people want to make it. If states want to define marriage as a union between a man and Volkswagen or a woman and a baloney sandwich, then they're perfectly capable and empowered to do that. If the Federal government wants to encourage certain conduct under the tax code or other Federal law, and discourage other conduct, then it's perfectly capable and empowered to do that. If States don't like having the Federal government inject itself into State government issues, then they're perfectly capable and empowered to reject the Federal government - and should. Just did, in fact, in Massachusetts. Seems to me this issue us playing out exactly as it should, and if everyone is patient, everything will find its proper place.
Fair enough, but this begs the real question. Why were all the benefits of marriage set up in the first place? In other words, why should the rest of us chip in money to encourage these unions? If the answer is something as simple as taking care of a significant other, then it makes total sense. Where the argument falls short, however, is if the institution of marriage was set up to encourage US population growth, much as the "no spilled seed" rule was invoked to make the church grow. Therein is the only counter-argument that makes any sense to me.
Civilly? Yeah, taking care of a significant other would be my choice for the point of origin. Homestead laws and certain vehicles of ownership were much the same. Seems to me that man marrying man and woman marrying baloney sandwich was such a foreign concept that you can't even say it was an oversight or conscious choice. It just never entered the equation. But, Constitutionally, restricting marriage to a man-woman relationship in order to encourage population growth sufficient to sustain our economy should be more than sufficient to support discrimination. And, after all, laws do discriminate. The best part of this whole debate is how it has furthered the discussion of states fighting back on a Constitutional level and asserting themselves and their policy choices. That's almost exactly what happened with slavery in the mid-1800's which, eventually, led to the biggest Constitutional corrections since drafting. It's a really cool and growing fight. We saw it most recently here in the Massachusetts case, but it also took center stage in the Chicago gun case. Unless you're gay and you need to get your taxes done immediately, it will be interesting to sit back and see how all this stuff develops. You have to think it's going to get a kick in the ass within the next week or two, when the California gay marriage case is finally decided. Then, it will go up to the Ninth Circuit; the Ninth Circuit will rule in favor of a Federal gay marriage right (because that's what the Ninth Circuit does); and then it will either be argued at the Supreme Court in 2012, or the entire western portion of the country will have a Constitutional right to gay marriage. That's when the fun REALLY starts.
I pretty much agree with you, with one caveat: it's easy for me, a 21 year old straight man, to say that everything's going at it's natural pace. I can understand why an older gay, who is legitimately at risk of losing his/her partner and having to live with the legal ramifications of never having married them, would want to speed things up a little bit.
Sure, but being a government of laws, and not men, it would be best for our country if that old gay guy dies alone and single.
Ah, the usual misleading liberal crap. Race discrimination is based on a set characteristic of the victim. Refusing to extend the term marriage to a union of two homosexuals concerns behavior, not a set characteristic that cannot be changed. As I have said before, sexual preference discrimination is unlike all other forms of discrimination that involve protected classes under law, except the practice of religion, which is an instructive comparision. The practice of religion also primarily concerns behavior, but this comes with the recognition that society retains the right to regulate the practice of religion. In short, trying to use terms like separate but equal is misleading and intended to cloud the analysis. An other consideration is there is no rational basis behind race discrimination. But there is a rational basis in determining that unions that from the basic social building block and within which children are optimally born and raised should be headed by a man and a woman. It is a social judgment that takes into account that a family headed by a man and a woman allows children to experience both sexes as role models, in turn preparing them best for dealing with both sexes in the larger world. There is also a valid social judgment that the natural parents of a child should be encouraged to jointly raise that child. Now of course one may dismiss these values, and disagree that they have value, but to say that sort of judgment is without rational basis is nonsense. That rational basis in turn becomes the grounds for using the term marriage and what society then bestows on those who enter into it as a form of approval, of imprimatur, which of course is exactly why gay groups and those who support the gay agenda are not satisfied with civil unions, even if the benefits are the same. They WANT that imprimatur, that social approval. Tolerance is not enough for them. How does this affect me personally? Just as any larger social policy's adoption does. A society based on a family consisting of a marriage between a man and a woman is a better performing one and one that better introduces children raised within it to then enter into society with knowledge of how both sexes act. As a member of society I benefit when society is improved. Put it this way - how do you benefit from society helping the disabled and the poor? By being part of a better society, a more humane society, that's how you benefit. And beyond that the extension of benefits to homosexuals in civil unions either requires an increase in social expenditures to fund those benefits, or diminishes the benefits available to straight marriages if the expenditures are merely maintained at the same level. As a taxpayer these judgments also have an effect on me. Finally it affects me in terms of my being a member of society who is in effect forced to approve and venerate a form of behavior that I choose to merely tolerate. I am for toleration of homosexuals, but I do not venerate their behavior, and do not feel that the social collective should be forced to venerate it. Now of course if I find myself in the minority and the majority on its own chooses to extend the term marriage to homosexual unions, that would change the calculus somewhat, to be sure. Perhaps that day will come. It's nto here yet, imo.
It's not a load of shit. Why does their union have to be called marriage when it is not the definition of a marriage? You are acting like because I believe that the sacrament of marriage is sacred it is an affront to gays. Why? it is not about them it is about a union between a man and a women. Just like it is traditionally defind. Ok, lets ask you, if they have the exact same rights as married couples and it is called something else then why do they do you need it to be called a marriage?
Put gays on an island and let them do whatever they want. 100 years from now everyone on that island will be dead and we can go back to being normal. Don't argue with them. Give them whatever they want except adoption and the problem will be solved within a few generations
I already answered that. They want society's stamp of approval. They want more than tolerance. They want veneration. It's not really about rights to benefits and that sort of thing. Calling it marriage insetad of civil unions means that society thinks gay marriages and as deserving of approval and honor as straight marriages. This is why it's the central objective of the gay agenda.
Wow, some of you really need to wake up. My wife and I were married by an Elvis. There was and is nothing religious about it, yet it is still a marriage. If two people love each other and want to be married, they should be able to. There really shouldn't even be a debate about it. Anything less is discrimination, however you want to dress it up.
Amazing. Another example that the Mayans are probably right, that 2012 is TEOTWAWKI. You and I at least agree, on the underlying premise of what the argument actually is. I can see your description as fairly as mine, but we do agree that it revolves around the insistence on the exact verbiage...(no matter if you call it the right to self define or any of the other high minded sounding lefty euphemisms...)
I have a militant gay sister - married once and now engaged - and in her fairer minded moments, I have to think she would agree with that statement. I'd probably take out the word "veneration," but the rest of it seems pretty good. I'll ask her someday when she has a few drinks in her. Truth serum, and such.
I figured it had everything to do with rubbing the word "marriage" in everyones faces. They keep saying it's about equal rights and I have no problem with that part of it. So I really have not seen their side of it. I have always felt give them every right but not the name becasue it is sacred to me. See I don't care what they do in their own homes but I think changing the meaning of "marriage" because they feel like they don't get the "emotional approval" from society that they think they need is horribly petty and vendictive. They need to be happy with their place in life with or without societies "approval" of their choices in life just like I need to be happy with my place in life without theirs or anyone elses.
I'll repeat the question I asked earlier in the thread - how does a gay couple's use of the word "marriage" change what it means to you? The only way in which I can see it has any impact is if you define your union by that of others, which is frankly a weird thing to do. What I refer to as football is not what you refer to as football. That doesn't make either of us wrong, nor does it denigrate or cheapen either sport to either of us. It's simply a word. You're deliberately picking a reason to have a pointless and unnecessary fight with a section of society you don't understand; I'd advocate turning your righteous anger towards something considerably more important than this.
