As an Ohio resident, I’ll be going to the polls to vote for a presidential candidate who believes that marriage is between a man and a woman. We Ohioans also get to decide whether to amend the state constitution to include language supporting our current ban on same-sex marriage recognition. Additionally in Cincinnati, voters are going to decide whether to repeal a 1993 amendment to the city charter prohibiting council to implement protections for the gay community.
I hear so many politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, saying that marriage needs to be protected. What I want to know is what are we protecting it from? Why does marriage have to be only between a man and a woman? Can anyone provide any reasonable justification for this other than religious belief? Since when are civil commitments any less legal than religious commitments?
I invite anyone who subscribes to this to tell me the difference between marriage and civil union. If you believe that gays are entitled to the same basic rights any married couple would have, then why can’t we just allow them to marry as anyone else would?
Does anyone else see the duality of Kerry’s “I cannot legislate an article of my faith” in relation to anti-abortion laws with his “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman” statement?
I’m troubled by this. Please help me understand it. I’m trying very hard not to see this as a strictly religious issue.
To be fair, it’s a losing proposition for any presidential candidate to support SSM. Kerry probably went as far as he could without being run out of town by the party leaders.
Well, to be fair, the word was originally hypocrisy, but I guess I decided to tone it down a bit so as not to stir the cauldron. And since you’ve pointed that out, I can agree that that is precisely Kerry’s goal as well.
But it is disingenuous, is it not?
I’m hoping someone here will pipe up about what the statement really means though. Why did he even have to go that far? Couldn’t he have made his point about gay rights without uttering that ridiculous platitude?
To be clear, Kerry is on record as supporting civil unions that give all the rights of marriage. Bush doesn’t even support that. The Federal Marriage Amendment he supports states that:
Kerry opposes this amendment. While civil unions justifiably strike many as being still a form of second-class citizenship, Kerry at least recognizes the inequity of having your access to a bunch of legal rights and benefits turn on the gender of your life partner.
Taking a stab in the dark, perhaps Kerry feels that “marriage” as a concept should be left up to the religious leaders; if they feel that “marriage” is something that should be left between a man and a woman, then so be it.
As a political leader, however, he believes in fairness for everyone, and thus supports giving equal rights to homnosexual couples as heterosexual couples get. Calling it by a different name – “civil unions” – keeps it from intruding into the domain of the religious leaders.
Kerry wants to give equality to all, even if it means sneaking those rights through the side door, as it were. Bush wants to legislate religious doctrine and nail the doors shut.
I think he would have been wise to leave out the comment about marriage being between a man and a woman as well, but I think I can see a fine distinction here between the abortion and gay marriage issues.
On the abortion issue, he’s saying that he will not prevent other people from getting abortions just because he thinks abortion is wrong. Whereas Bush wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.
On the SSM issue, (I think that) he is also saying (by endorsing civil union and opposing DOMA) that he will not seek to explicitly ban SSM just because he thinks marriage is between a man and a woman. Whereas Bush wants to add an SSM ban to the Constitution.
Seems consistent to me. At least he’s willing to allow civil union to the states. Not the full victory for gay rights that SSM would be, but aren’t the legal ramifications more important than semantics? And allowing civil union would open the door a little more for SSM sometime in the future. Baby steps, baby steps . . .
I fully support the adoption of gay unions that are exactly identical to marriages in the eyes of the law. That being said, I would adamantly oppose calling the unions ‘marriages’ because I think we should try to preserve the connotation of the word itself. Many people dislike referring to a gay partnership as a ‘union’ because it singles them out as different than other couples(or something along those lines), but I disagree because they are different than traditional partnerships.
If a guy says that he’s married, I’d like to be able to ask about his ‘wife’ (and vice-versa), rather than reaching a point where I’d always have to refer to the unknown spouse as a ‘partner’.
Not quite true. Bush favors a ban at the federal level. Kerry favors a ban at the state level. He’s on record as saying he’d vote for a MA state constutitional amendment to ban gay marriage if he were a state legislator there. But, as president, Kerry would not interfere with any state’s decision either way. Bush, obviously, would.
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Please think about exactly why it would bother you to have to refer to the unknown heterosexual spouse as “partner.” Now, please think about how it feels for homosexuals to have to refer to their spouses as “partner” instead of being able to say “husband” or “wife.”
[/hijack]
I never said anything about the sanctity of “husband” or “wife”. I wouldn’t have as much of a problem referring to unionized homesexuals’ partners with those terms, as I would with labelling those unions as “marriages”. I would imagine it would seem pretty strange at first, and might require some adjusting to, but I could be comfortable with it after a while.
:D, I am not realy the best doper to do a joke based on accurate spelling. Banns are read in Church for a few weeks before a marriage takes place. This allowed in olden times people to challenge the marriage (if they could show one of those getting married was already married for instance).
OK, thanks for edumacating me on the details. The bolded part expresses pretty well what I was trying to get at.
Re the terms “husband” and “wife”: Even though I favor SSM, I still have a mental disconnect when someone who refers to “my wife” turns out to be female (and similarly for a gay man and “my husband.” I’m working to correct that, but it’s still there.
The issue of asking about someone’s spouse, if the asker wants to commit to the term “husband” or “wife,” exists regardless of whether the marriage is government-sanctioned or not, no? (Just like the problem of the gender-neutral third-person pronoun.) I imagine the solution might be something like, “So, are you married?” “Yes, my husband is an investment banker,” or whatever, to clue the asker in as to what flavor of spouse the person has.
To answer the OP, there are few, if any, doper who actually seem to hold a “won’t someone please think of the children… gay people are EVIL” view.
To put words in other people’s mouths, however, various dopers have held somewhat anti-gay-marriage views for strict constructionist (Bricker) or they-should-have-the-same-rights-but-that’s-just-not-what-the-word-means-dammit (Weird Al Einstein) reasons.
