Andrew Sullivan and others twisted and contorted to assure readers that what happens in Massachusetts stays in Massachusetts. He’s wrong. Gay marriage will be imposed not by the peoples representatives, but via the bench. Funny I was saying the same thing last month when it was New York, today it’s California.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A judge ruled Monday that California’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, saying the state could no longer justify limiting marriage to a man and a woman.
In the eagerly awaited opinion likely to be appealed to the state’s highest court, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer said that withholding marriage licenses from gays and lesbians is unconstitutional.
“It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners,” Kramer wrote.
The judge wrote that the state’s historical definition of marriage, by itself, cannot justify the denial of equal protection for gays and lesbians.Judicial activism – it’s whats for dinner…
Update: Law professor Eugene Volokh notes that what some have, in the past, called “hysterical,” “emotional scare tactic[s],” or “canards” may well have been quite reasonable predictions. Interestingly he’s not referring to the standard denials of same sex marriage advocates, rather he’s looked back to the Equal Rights Amendment era.
Mantis,
why won’t those laws outlawing marriage of more than one partner not be declared unconstitutional now when brought forth by another minority within our society? What’s to stop someone from bringing a lawsuit against the state regarding the refusal of the state to issue another marriage license to someone? That’s what happened here in Massachusetts.
Where does this creation of special rights end? Will it ever end?
As to Totalitarianism
There has been as yet NO totalitarian state. There have been many that are totalitarian is some or many aspects. The use of totalitarian in relation to the issue of gay marriage is whether the State will, in a totalitarian way, dictate to the citizens of the State how they will embrace this issue. As it stands now churches and citizens are free to accept, or not, gay unions.
The issue isn’t whether my brother and I can cohabitate but whether that cohabitation is defined as marriage. Traditionally such a union (or family) has not been deemed marrage. In this sense the recient juditial edicts are a departure from our 250 year tradition. By what yardstick do the judges base this sudden and jarring departure from the norm? And once we have left the safety of our traditional heritage what will restrain us?
I also find it very curious that proponents of “gay marriage” rely on two courses of argument: one, that of insulting the values and beliefs of anyone who isn’t a proponent of ‘gay marriage,” and, two, that of decrying the lack of a religious quality in others who are not a proponent of “gay marriage.”
I mention this because it is these very beliefs, values and religious traditions that those who DO promote “gay marriage” actually oppose, and many who actually revile them.
We’re supposed to have the Freedom of Religion. We’re free to exercise our concept of religion without interruption by the government, without threat and assualt by the government. IF the government is forced on demand to assualt, even corrode or prevent, the freedom of religion by many, based upon the demands of a few, then that, too, is entirely non Constitutional.
But, on an interpersonal level, the offense to my read is that the values, the religious tenets that define what marriage is to me, to many like me who share my religious perspectives, is that our values are derided. We get harassed and taunted because we don’t agree that a “marriage” consists of two persons of the same gender, by people who insist they are seeking some enlightened “spirituality” that is evident in the fruit it bears: denigrations to others, humiliations of ideals, assault on respected concepts and relationships. Which is, in fact, not at all the evidence of anyone enlightened, much less well balanced.
So far, society in general has to be convinced that “gay marriage” makes beneficial sense, makes sense at all and by insulting the very concept of marriage itself as is already established, there doesn’t appear to be much headway there in garnering support for the “gay marriage” issue, and so the judiciary is sought to insist the issue onto the people, which is, in fact, both an insult to our democratic process and an insult to the very religiousity that “gay marriage” proponents suggest they represent.
So far, it’s a losing method in my experience, one based upon the desire to literally redefine what “marriage” is, and why. Meaning, it’s not, actually, to be real here, an argument about “rights” at all, but an insistence on certain obstacles to behaviors being desolved. Christianity is an obstacle and that’s the actual issue here to those who are promoting this entire issue. Our government not to include church? Then don’t base “gay marriage” pleas upon any concept of false religiousity. Our government to provide a new classification of “rights” delivered to some by the judiciary based upon a handful of individual desires? Doesn’t describe a democracy, at least not that in the United States.
These arguments are tired and old. They were used to oppose interracial marriage 50 years ago, and– surprise– legal interracial marriage hasn’t brought about Armageddon.
Same-sex marriage will not lead to bestiality marriages because bestiality still is illegal. I don’t have any of the relevant bills in front of me, but I’m pretty sure the wording regarding marriage is that of “persons”, which is pretty clear.
Same-sex marriage will not legalize polyandry (the gender-neutral form of polygamy). Outlawing it had no relevance to same-sex relationships. No one has used the gender-specific language that outlawed Mormon-style polygamy in an effort to circumvent same-sex issues. The two have no relationship. The ruling said “person”, singular. Marriage is a legal contract that lays out pretty specific exclusivity clauses. Couples may fuck everyone else they see, but the legal contracts limit their marital status until dissolved.
Same-sex marriage will not compel churches to perform ceremonies they oppose. You can’t walk into a Catholic church and demand that they marry you and your opposite-gender partner. They will have conditions to impose, as would most religions. This is why a judge can perform marriages, for people who don’t want to conform to a religious standard. If the Catholics, or the Jeish synagogues, do not have to perform heterosexual weddings they don’t wish to, they can’t be forced to perform gay weddings.
If, as so many of you have suggested, these things MUST always hinge on a popular vote of elected officials, our country would be vastly different today. Slavery would not have been abolished on just a legislative vote. Women’s suffrage would not have happened for decades more, if it were up to the all-male Congress to decide. Brown v. Board of Ed. would not have passed that standard. Interracial marriage would not have gotten a majority at the time it was finally allowed.
I am not calling the opponents of same-sex marriage racist or misogynist. I’m saying that you aren’t thinking these things through. When a judge rules the way you want to, that’s justice. When they don’t, that’s judicial activism. Plain and simple: if you aren’t gay, this doesn’t have a single thing to do with you. Your marriage is just as stable as it was yesterday. If it isn’t stable, it’s not the fault of gays in California. If you dislike gay marriage so, the solution is obvious: don’t marry a gay person.
“”I’d really like to hear someone who supports gay ‘marriage’ explain why someone – who is not already married – can’t get ‘married’ to 2, 3 or more other people at the same time.”
Because there are laws against it.”
Uh-huh. Right up until 3 people claim it is a ‘Human Right’ for them all to be married together and a judge rules in their favor. All the same arguments for gay ‘marriage’ will also be used for group ‘marriage’.
(not much) time will tell.
If you can’t drive 55, you get a speeding ticket. If you drive without a license, you get a fine, sometimes you get incarcerated or close to it. What the individual wants is up to their own imagination and capabiliities, but what society organizes based upon citizen majority determination sets the rules for behaviors for (most) all. That’s what socieity is.
“Gay marriage” is only as viable an idea as society determines it to be. As to governmental process, it takes a representational government to make that and most other determinations. If it’s determined otherwise, it’s not Constitutional and San Francisco and Massachusetts, as examples of that, prove time and again that they disregard our very form of representational government by a handful of opinions. Now, again, WHAT is “bigotry?”
why won’t those laws outlawing marriage of more than one partner not be declared unconstitutional now when brought forth by another minority within our society?
Well likely because polygamy is considered fraud and is a criminal act. Gay marriage is not a criminal act. There is no problem with the government providing boundaries on marriage, the question is where the line should be drawn. As far as your slippery slope argument goes, the same thing was said about miscegenation, but that didn’t lead to legalized bigamy or incestuous relationships.
to Wavemaker..
Heh, HEh Heh I TRUELY do apoligize. I am typing as FAST as I can and I CANNOT spell. I am typing into the comment window which has no spellchecker. But I really do apoligize.
You are entirely correct. The state courts have found only state rights but the 14th Amendment will be used to bludgen the rest of the states into accepting the gay marriages, especially if many states find for gay marriage. The U.S. Constitution is silent on marriage as it was concidered a state issue, or, at least it was NOT thought to be a federal issue. The modern use of equal protection has rendered states rights null if not void. In this sense what individual states do is pretty important, particularly in respect to an institution like marriage. My Wife and I got married in Athens Greece but I’m pretty sure I’m still married in Iowa.
What Gay people do is not my consern or interest but when their lifestyle is crammed down my throat then I am conserned. And it seems a short way from Gay marriage to demanding that my church and my household pay homage to it.
Tolerance is a two way street and I don’t see where the gay community respects my point-o-view.
I think pretty much once the courts all agree that prohibiting gays from marrying is uncontistutional, pretty much any and every other law regulating marriage will be declared unconsitutional, about the only ones that may stand are those relating to the ability of minors to marry.
But the courts won’t have a leg to stand on in regards to any other laws regulating marriage.
One of the reasons I don’t like the idea of these decisions being made through the judiciary absent any debate, is that a lot of these issues really do need to be worked throuh in debate, and turning the intitution of marriage upside down after thousands of years of a pretty much universal definition is going to have affects. Maybe not enough to continue to not recognize such marriages, but we are kidding ourselves if this decision doesn’t affect the institution of marriage, and I am one who doesn’t think it is going to affect it for the better.
Gays marrying probably won’t have much affect on me or my marriage, but it very well may harm the institution itself, and we need to work through the ramifications of just what that may mean.
We also need to realize that sometimes because a law is dumb, or unfair, that doesn’t neccessarily mean it is unconstitutional. I feel like we are heading down a road where every dumb law must be a violation of some constitutional rights, rather than just being a dumb law.
What Gay people do is not my consern or interest but when their lifestyle is crammed down my throat then I am conserned. And it seems a short way from Gay marriage to demanding that my church and my household pay homage to it.
How is allowing gays to marry each other cramming their lifestyle down your throat. Are you forced to watch Queer as Folk or listen to showtunes? Also, does the state demand your church and household pay “homage” to straight marriage? No, it doesn’t. Why should that happen with gay marriage.
Randy: I assure you, many of your fellow citizens have already well thought this issue through, and arrived at conclusions different than your own, and by different processes and references.
There you go again, denigrating the worth, veracity, of your fellows, just because you want what you want.
Believe what you want, but don’t force your beliefs as being “government” issue just because you imagine same-gender individuals as a family. “Marriage” is well defined as what it is for many millions of people, and has been for a long, long time now, and most religions present evidence why it is and how it is defined, as now. To redefine the relationship itself if the issue for those seeking variations of the genders involved (among other amlifications that will become possible if the first is enabled), and so far, the redefinition has been based upon ASSUMPTION and OPINION by some. Not the stuff that convinces others beyond reading, considering, moving on.
Well isn’t this interesting?
Three or four semi-literate, left leaning bloggophiles have decided to come here and attempt debate.
Is this 1% or maybe 10% of their total population?
Whatever, it’s a start.
Three or four semi-literate, left leaning bloggophiles have decided to come here and attempt debate.
Who you calling semi-literate, knuckle-dragger?
manits: as with others of similar perspective to yours, you are not taking into consideration the value that is placed on the relationship itself by many others. Marriage as concept and religious definition, ideal, relationship, all of which are suggested as being held inviolate by the ‘gay marriage’ proponents. And, and even or, by government process in the civil definition, still held in certain regard and sancitity. Otherwise, men and women would continue to simply cohabitate without further regard, but why don’t they? Why aren’t children marrying their parents or whatever?
Because society has an ideal of what family is, what marriage is, what genders are, what age represents and why. These issues are more seriously evaluated by many than perhaps you recognize.
So far, there’s been absolute failure on a social level by those promoting the idea of “gay marriage” as an enlightened perspective. That is, the actual retrogressive perspective (“spiritually,” socially, intellectually, governmentally) just may be the insistence on the idea, the promotion of the idea itself.
Because, highly indulgent social organizations don’t have a good track record of longevity. Nor do the cultures that permit them.
As to miscegenation and polygamy:
There have been many changes effected on our Constitution, mores and traditions. Some were good, some not so good. Ridding our country of racially devisive laws and restrictions were an unmitigated good. But to suggest that because THEY were good then ANY change must also be good is silly.
Polygamy is illegal only because the laws are interpreted that way. Same sex marriage is illegal in the same way. If you can make one legal by juditial fiat you can make the other legal the same way, the same day. The fact that there are poygamist groups living together, 30,000 or 300,000, is not justification for legalizing that situation.
Where I am it’s 7:30 am and I have to go now. If anyone wants to take issue with what I’ve written, spelling, grammer, content, email me. Thanks to you all!…Brad
“Well likely because polygamy is considered fraud and is a criminal act. Gay marriage is not a criminal act. “
But on what basis is it criminal? The state government said so, but what did they base this on? How is this basis different from why they prohibit gay marriage? I honestly don’t see a huge compelling interest here, that would declare one still wrong but the other unconstitutional.
“There is no problem with the government providing boundaries on marriage, the question is where the line should be drawn.”
This I agree with, but you see it isn’t the government legislature that is getting to discuss this in a debate, it is the judiciary imposing its will on the people. The judiciary isn’t where this debate belongs at this moment in time.
” As far as your slippery slope argument goes, the same thing was said about miscegenation, but that didn’t lead to legalized bigamy or incestuous relationships. “
Except that it really isn’t the same. The Loving decision was still about men marrying women, allowing blacks to marry whites didn’t change much in the definition of marriage, also, the issues in the Loving case were debated and discussed for over 20 years before the case was taken to the Supreme court, and by that time, less than half the states (think it was 16 but may be 13) still had laws prohibiting it. Basically by that time, the court could easily argue that the states were trending away from the prohibitions (and what the states are deciding is something SCOTUS considers, when deciding a case).
At this point in time, not a single legislature has chosen to recognize gay marriage, one did so by directions of the Supreme court, and the other state went the route of civil unions (although I admit I actually agree more with how the Vermont court did it than Mass. Vermont courts said-there is a problem the legislature needs to come up with the remedy, Vermont legislature debated it, and chose Civil unions, in Mass the courts basically told the legislature exactly what law they had to pass).
But you can’t really compare the two in regards to what can happen to the institution of marriage itself. There is no debate that historically marriage has always been defined as a man/woman. What these cases are about is changing the definition to something else, and this really is something that has to be debated, in the long run it will be much better for the cause than what is happening now.
If the left could ever get it through their thick skulls into their tiny little brains marriage IS NOT a right. The sooner that they come to grips to this little fact the sooner this can be resolved. Marriage is a priviledge, there are restrictions on it. I couldn’t marry my sister if I wanted to in any state but maybe Arkansas or West Virginia. Would it make any difference if we had a “loving relationship? Marriage is just like driving, you must meet certain requirements to qualify for a license, if you don’t they deny you the license. If you think driving, fishing, hunting, being a hairdresser, or anything else is a right how do you explain the licensing requirements? Rights are not obtained with a license or a permit and cannot be revoked short of a law being enacted that is subject to supreme court review. No matter how passionately you feel that marriage is a right it isn’t. If you can ever get together and get it written into the constitution that it is a right it will become one, but it’s not true now, never has been on the past, and won’t ever be without that. Wishing it was true doen’t make it true.
What bullwinkle wrote (^^).
-S-,
as with others of similar perspective to yours, you are not taking into consideration the value that is placed on the relationship itself by many others.
Ah yes, the sanctity! I have taken it into consideration, and dismissed it as both irrelevant and hypocritical. It is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with law. It is hypocritical because no one seems to care that somewhere between 40-50% of all “sacred marriages” end in divorce. If our laws must are to take into account the sanctity of marriage, why is divorce legal?
Brad,
Ridding our country of racially devisive laws and restrictions were an unmitigated good. But to suggest that because THEY were good then ANY change must also be good is silly.
Didn’t suggest that. I brought it up because people made the same argument then that you make now, that this is a slippery slope and pretty soon it will be ok to marry your daughter and your pet frog. Didn’t happen with interracial marriage, won’t happen with gay marriage.
Polygamy is illegal only because the laws are interpreted that way. The fact that there are poygamist groups living together, 30,000 or 300,000, is not justification for legalizing that situation.
I wasn’t suggesting that. I was just noting it as a curiousity, especially because no one seems too upset about them destroying the “sanctity” of marriage.
I guess I was being a little harsh earlier.
I should have said 2 or 3 semi-literate and 1 literate left–leaning blogophiles…etc., etc.
bullwinkle,
Well my tiny little brain understands just fine that marriage is not a right but a privilege. But I agree many on the left who call it a right are usually pretty dippy or don’t understand their terms. Let me ask something though. Can you get a fishing license if you’re gay? If so I wonder what it’s doing to the sanctity of fishing.
Mantis,
Okay, I can’t resist just one more. Why is same sex marriage “cramming it down my throat?”
Because it won’t stop there, IT CAN’T. Already it’s being used as a battering ram to define uncivil thought, unallowed thought. My kids bring it home from school. I live in a Christian house, run by Christian tenets. Homosexuals are NOT evil, they are NOT the problem but active homosexual unions ARE evil and when I cannot teach my kids that then I have an issue with the society I live in. I have a right to live in a society that respects my traditional American beliefs. Shouldn’t my church be able to hire people that espouse the beliefs of my church? Isn’t this what tolerance is about? Religous freedom?
In a way, the problem isn’t gay marriage. Gay marriage is just the symptom of the destruction of the values and tenets of our civilization. The writer above..S.. mentioned that societies that are “indulgent” are tending to distruction. I would have said that a civilization that can’t grasp what it is and what it means to be that civilization will not long endure. If you don’t know what you believe in why fight wars for the survival of that belief.
Disraeli said that a conservative is someone that allows change in accordance with tradition and a liberal is one that demands change in accordance with commonly held views. I am a conservative in this vein and not a libertarian or liberal.
Thanks for the debate. I’ve found you perfectly literate and engaging. Have a great day, or night; whatever it is where you are….Brad
mantis: see? There ya’ go, reverting to the tiresome and quite self defeating retort along the lines that marriage is useless, worthless, lacks merit (so many divorces, after all, it can’t be worth much as a relationship)…
Which then takes me back to the line of questioning, if marriage lacks value to proponents of ‘gay marriage,’ then why the focus on marriage at all?
First, you denigrate the values and worth of the relationship itself, then you denigrate any religious value of genders and separations of genders (among other things), then you resort to sarcasm.
It’s the same old same old that fails repeatedly to inspire anyone (else, outside the, um, movement) to support the idea that you and yours write that you must have. Your demands are failing to inspire adequate social support to enforce delivery of what you want, and so you resort to demeaning the society itself.
The sarcasm…I just don’t understand it, gave up trying a long time ago. Sarcasm is like a little car with a bad transmission trying to make a hill: you backfire, everyone else speeds ahead, you fall back down to where you started, no one’s giving you a push, everyone else has topped the hill and gone forward, there you are, sitting at the bottom in that little sarcastic vehicle.
I don’t know about the sanctity of fishing, but I’m assuming that the added stress of seeing the human that just caught you get bent over and screwed by his boyfriend coupled with the strenuous act of being drug into a boat one a hook could possibly negate any positive effects of the catch and release program. Not that there’s anything wrong with that……..
I really like it when bigots out themselves. Blogs and Google are in fact a good thing.
l8r 81g0t5!
Bullwinkle has indeed made an interesting argument, but it begs the point. His argument is that marriage is defined in law, which brings us full circle to the point itself, which is: is the law constitutional or not. Property rights are a matter of law as well, so his argument would be perfectly lucid when applied to keeping slaves. In that case, the property laws were orginally upheld by the courts and much later overturned in the post-war period. Nobody is arguing what the legislative branch has said about marriage in California. The argument is about the constitutionality of those laws, which is the function of judicial review. So that argument really gets us nowhere.
Like I said, until there’s a constitutional ammendment, like the 13th in the case of slavery, marriage is not a right. It’s going to take the same thing for gay marriage, slavery wasn’t outlawed by activist judges. If gays want to get married they’re going to have to quit pissing like me off by demanding it or calling a right before the fact, the whole point is that these thins are done through legislation, and should be. I couldn’t care less if they get married or not, but I do care if a judge overrides the will of the majority. I strongly support common unions as the sanest way to end the debate on the matter, but that’s not good enough for them. It never will be as long as they keep believing that marriage is a right. Marriage is extremely overrated anyway, there are only two ways out, death or divorce, I know one isn’t any fun at all, and I strongly supect the other pretty much sucks also.
We find some common ground here. A lof of the arguments on both sides come down to simple semantics. “Marriage” is a word loaded with important religious tradition, but the same word also represents legal civil unions. As example: if I get married at the courthouse, my Catholic church doesn’t call that a marriage. So we are using the same word to represent different thoughts.
Politically, the gay marriage folks would be smarter to advocate a different word for legal unions of same sex couples. If the eskimos can have seven words for snow, surely we can have two words for marriage. Sort of a separate but equal status. This is true if the cause is truly about obtaining the same legal rights as married couples.
I think the end-game is for the Supreme Court to rule, as it must eventually. I hope that ruling is to leave marriage law up to the states, because it would be an amazing stretch for either side to find any grounds for their argument in the US Constitution.
If they ever looked at things reasonably they’d realize that marriage isn’t a right for anyone, it’s the exact opposite. When a couple gets married they give up the right to decide whether or not they owe each others debts and the right to divide their property however they see fit. The only right I know of you gain is that your spouse can’t be compelled to testify against you, doesn’t mean they won’t if you piss them off, just that they can’t be forced. Bullwinklette and I have been together for years but we’ve both kept the rights to our personal property, either of us can come and go as we please without owing the other anything. Had we married we’d give up that right, in effect turn it over to a judge to decide how our property would be divided, and the right to decide if and when we could marry someone else if we decided to do so. How such a loss of rights is suddenly a desirable right to someone that never had that worry before is beyond me. It’s kinda like asking for the right to cancer or a higher tax bracket.
The problem is a lot of marriage priviledges are codified into law. “Married” is tax filing status, for example. “Married” defines certain after death perks, such as the continuance of public pension payments, and inheritance in the absence of wills. “Marriage” defines who makes decisions upon incapacitation (witness the Terri Schiavo case) . etc etc etc. Marriage is important under law. I may agree with you that only a fool would get married, but there is no question it comes with certain legal priviledges.
As far as I know all of those but the continuance of a pension can be handled by a durable power of attorney and a will. You can turn over all of your business to any other person and leave your money to your cat. I turned over the right to make medical decisions in case I was unable to a friend when I was undergoing treatment for cancer without any problems in the 80’s. You can make nearly anyone the beneficiary of your life insurance and most health insurance policies I’ve ever seen have the option to add any permanent household member just like they are family. I don’t know about other states but even back in the 70’s it was an option on the insurance I was offered through the jobs I had in Texas. Changing the name to a common union or a legal union could settle all of that if they’d just settle for that. They practice a different type of sex complete with different names for it with no problem, why they object to having their relationship termed differently is beyond explanation, at least to me.
Randy and Brad, one at a time:
Randy: Worthless argument. Interracial marriage woes half a century ago revolved around RACE. Not Gender. Those being discriminated against were couples of one MAN and one WOMAN. Get an angle that’s intelligent, instead of a revised version of history.
Brad: Just to correct your idea of rights: Our rights were not written by, or into, the constitution. That document is not a giver of rights, and has never had that power. Our rights existed long before that document was ever written. It was drafted as carefully as possible to protect the rights we already had been given by our creator, as we had acknowledged them. Just wanted to point that out.
Sure bullwinkle, but that line of reasoning applies the same to heterosexual civil unions. Why have a civil marriage status at all if it is so unimportant?
Jim, that is an interesting argument. If one is to believe such a divine inspiration for the US Constitution, what would be a circumstance that would ever justify amending it?
bullwinkle and McCain…you’re right about that mystery, that unspecified motivation, because it’s not really about marriage but about implementing, by hook or by crook, an override to a set of values. Marriage represents a certain extension of the Judeo Christian theology, even among those civil contracts (otherwise, why even bother with the latter if not for certain motivations, however unstated, as to changing the social definition of a relationship)…it has something greater to do with what’s not being expressed about the motivation for ‘gay’ marriage (an oxymoron), than what is being stated.
Despite all the woes and drawbacks and failures, most people still approach marriage as some sort of religious experience. Breaking it down to being regarded as mere contract in society also breaks down regard for other values. Which is what I believe is the actual motivation, that and Social Security benefits…an huge issue not being discussed, by the way, if and when ‘gay marriage’ is ever implemented.
bullwinkle…your fishing analogy is mystifying to me, however creative it is.
~:-D
The only reason I could see is for tax purposes or a pension. They are trying force it for the name and the fact that they feel they are being deprived of a right somehow. I don’t want any “rights” that force me to surrender my rights, and I can’t understand why they do. If they are anticipating the need for their mate to be protected from having to testify against them they need to rethink their plans to something a little more in line with the law. The biggest problem behind this is the feeling they are being deprived of a right, but there is no such right for either gays or straights. Maybe there should be, but there isn’t now.
If it’s only contract, simply civil arrangement by sanction, then why the cakes, the dresses, the hugs and kisses and all that merry making at the “ceremony”? Meaning, it’s not about marriage so much as it is about forcing a key aspect to Judeo Christian relationship include that which most of the theology instructs against. Unfortunately for the gay marriage movement, Nature already spoke. It was a definitive expression.
As for the issue of ‘rights’, however, bullwinkle, yes, what you write. There is no right to marriage, there’s no right to homosexuality, there’s no right to heterosexuality. The entire argument that the ‘gay marriage’ movement is making about a “denial of rights” thing is illogical, isn’t based in reality. I don’t find the opinion by the S.F. court to be logical, also. The issue of “discimination” is absurd.
-s-, because in practice, they really are trying to shove their concept of marriage down your throat. But so what — if they want to make fools of themselves, it doesn’t infringe on my rights. And in my church, as in all churches, I don’t even have to accept their marriage. So I can have my marriage, and they can have their civil union. There is a great disninction between marriage and marriage, that is, between a civil marriage and a religious marriage.
Well -s-, you would have to define what you mean by “right”. Certainly there is no right to marriage of any kind in the US Constitution. But one wouldn’t argue that heterosexual marriage is therefore unconstitutional. At a state level, if the rights of married and unmarried people are different (and they ARE), then you have to decide if that is allowable. I would argue it IS allowable, as long as the state constitution defines marriage that way. If it doesn’t, then the legislative branch is granting special status to a group of people based on thin air, and the courts are entirely correct in striking those laws down.
That special status isn’t based on thin air, it’s based on those requesting it fullfilling certain requirements, in most states one of those is that they are a male/female couple. There are several other requirements that vary from state to state like age, whether or not the couple is closely related, and some states even limit the total number of marriages previous to the one being applied for. Failing to meet any of those requirements is reason to deny the license. If that is thin air then those who can’t meet the requirements have considerably less than thin air, and considerably less to complain about when they are denied a marriage license.
As far as I know all of those but the continuance of a pension can be handled by a durable power of attorney and a will.
That’s for sure. All these arguments I hear that they are being denied rights is b.s. I believe there were a couple of instances where someone was in the hospital and the family kept the partner from visiting. But that was over 30 years ago. Hell, half the staff in hospitals are gay these days. They aren’t going to keep anyone out.
I’ve heard people whine about why shouldn’t they be allowed to have rights of survivorship without the cost of a will. Not very wise. If you have no assets, I have two words for you: nolo press. It’s very simple. If you have assets of any significance, you should see an atty, whether gay, straight, married.
I hear all this whining about insurance coverage. Most government agencies have coverage for domestic partners. Which, as a taxpayer, I am also responsible for. Where’s my discounted medical coverage?
There is no discrimination in that there is no denial of equal protection. How does marriage entitle one to a tax break? Do you even get a tax break when you’re married? Isn’t that discrimination against single people? I’m suppose to want to lower someone else’s tax burden by increasing mine? No thanks. I’m not here to pay for everyone else’s benefits.
It’s all about acceptance. They want acceptance which has nothing to do with being treated fairly. You can not legislate everyone elses thoughts, feelings, etc. What about people who have religious objections against homosexuality? What’s next? Church doctrine must be changed?
I guess the thing I resent about this whole issue (besides the ridiculous interpretations of the constitution) is that I feel I am being forced to take part in a game of the Emperor’s New Clothes. I can not pretend some man is someone else’s wife. It ain’t gonna happen. Sorry. Uh Uh. Find someone else to catch the bouquet. I’m all camped out.
One more reason we need ot find an unused spine to implant into Dr. Frist.
JEFF:”If you are so all-fired intent on having gay marriage, then win that right through changing the law – “
Then the people of California will have to change the State constitution.
JUST ME:”the will of the people.”
Once upon a time, that will endorsed Jim Crow laws.
JUST ME: “No, but the abolitionists didn’t win through judicial fiat, “
Does the Civil War ring a bell?
DAVID:”Where is the will of the People?”
We have safeguards against “the tyranny of the majority.”