Florida Amendment 2: Gay Marriage.

[Musicat]

Vote for Prop 2. If you don’t, marriage will be destroyed!

Which means…all married couples will be unmarried? Mom & Pop can no longer sleep together? Cohabitation is illegal? No marriage licenses will be issued? All marriages are dissolved? WTF?

[BrainGlutton]

@vivalostwages

Still more letters to the editor of the local paper are pouring in from CA Prop 8 supporters claiming that Family, the Foundation of Society, will be torn apart if gays marry, because they don’t propagate.

To which I say, SFW? We don’t need any more propagation than there already is.

There are other obvious arguments as well.

Such as, if they don’t get married, they still won’t propagate. No difference to the population’s growth rate either way.

[Ludovic]

@Miller

Florida is a side-show to try to energize the fundy base. It doesn’t really mean anything.

The way I see it, the last half of the amendment, which also prohibits anything “substantially similar” to gay marriage (I dont remember the exact words,) would also make civil unions not only illegal but also unconstitutional.

Since Americans are much more likely to support civil unions than gay marriage, then if my interpretation of the last half of Amendment 2 is correct, enshrining this in the Florida Constitution means that enacting civil unions would be much more difficult, as you’d have to overturn an amendment rather than pass a law or get a court decision. I do agree that w/r/t Marriage it is largely meaningless, since voting that in would be unlikely in Florida at any rate.

[PerditaX]

@Bear_Nenno

This amendment protects marriage as the legal
union of only one man and one woman as husband
and wife and provides that no other legal union that
is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent
thereof shall be valid or recognized.
The direct financial impact this amendment will have
on state and local government revenues and
expenditures cannot be determined, but is expected
to be minor.

I saw a TV ad in Tampa with a man and woman who were domestic partners. Its take was that the part about “legal union that is treated as a marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof” would nullify their status as well. I think they have a point.