Gay marriage: let's do this one more time (with Obama tangent)

Great Debates
21

For my father, I think it’s about the first argument that Roddy posted. As far as he’s concerned, he’s done everything in his life right - he served his country in the military, he married (twice) and raised his children, and he paid child support and alimony to his first wife without a complaint. He’s been law-abiding and, if not religious, then at least respectful of the prerogatives of religion. He’s earned his social status, by God, and now these fringe element wackos want to come in and claim the same status and privileges that he has?

Along with that, he has a heavy, heavy dose of “oooh, gay, ICK!” Considering that he’s almost 81 years old, stubborn as a mule, and not entirely self-honest about how he reached his opinions, I don’t think any of us will be convincing him to back down on his anti-SSM stance.

My mom? I think I can take credit for her changing her stance from firmly anti-SSM to mildly pro-SSM by using Roddy’s second argument.

For her, the world is changing too quickly. She doesn’t know from week to week which rules are going to change and what side of the fight she’ll be seen on. As the instability of our culture makes her feel extremely insecure, she’s loathe to give up on any long standing custom, even if she can see where it’s doing harm.

But when I acknowledged to her that, yes, the world was changing in such a dramatic fashion, and so quickly, she could let go of some of her fear. When I pointed out the parallels between the gay rights movement and the women’s suffrage movement, she began to empathize.

I think a lot of people are probably like my mom. They’re scared and extremely uncomfortable with how the world changes around them, but they don’t want to be seen as cowardly or weak, so they don’t admit their fear. If we can empathize with them, if we can show them that we aren’t interested in mocking them, then we can find the common ground necessary to bring them around to at least tolerating our goals.

22

It has already been explained to you several times that it is practically impossible to create a separate legal institution with equivalent rights. Why do you continue to propogate this nonsense?

23

*And preemptively denying an accusation doesn’t necessarily free you from suspicion. You walk and talk pretty much like a duck, dude, but you dance enough sidestep to avoid actually engaging in the debate, so I’ll skip over your posts from here on. Hopefully someone who’s actually willing to honestly debate the opposition side will show up in this thread, instead of someone who actually, on a practical level, opposes SSM, but lacks the conviction to acknowledge it.

24

No it has been claimed, not explained, and certainly not established.

Oh my, someone may change something legally related to marriage and civil union might be out of synch. As if the legality of marriage changes all that often but grant it as a theoretical possibility. Explain why that would matter if civil union gave the rights that were necessary?

Interestingly (and to the original op) you seem to think that well informed constitutional lawyers (like Obama) are “seriously misinformed about how our legal system works” … excuse me if I doubt that.

I guess we have some basic disagreement as to what is more likely possible. To me SSM legislation at a federal level is not DOA, it isn’t even stillborn, it’s a spontaneous abortion if even concieved. SSM at a state level? Maybe a few states are possible but the slog will be slow and likely to have as many backslides as steps forward. And the battle is assured of helping rev up the RR like little else can - likely helping them win quite a few contests at various levels just as the SSM issue helped kill Kerry’s chances in 2004. Yeah, I resent that.

OTOH, strong civil union, even if not the same as marriage, has the support of the majority of Americans now, has the support of the incoming President, and has a Congress that would very likely pass it. The basics of property rights, medical decision making, child custody, etc. could be achieved within the next year or two. Perfect maybe not, but a huge step forward.

Consider it a stepping stone perhaps, but I would suspect that once the average citizen is more used to seeing and treating committed same sex couples with the same rights as other committed couples, their discomfort with accepting it as “marriage” may decrease. And while your battle to get recognition as “the same” as heterosexual couples wages on, same sex couples can wage it with much better rights than they have now.

A total aside, but the irony is that gays are fighting for something that seems to be falling of favor with heterosexual couples.

And perhaps it isn’t too shocking that many Blacks saw the SSM issue as a White concern given the state of heterosexual marriage within the Black community. (Or communities as I really do not think that there is any homgenous thing that can be called “the Black community”, but still.)

I do have to wonder if these figures somehow inform the POVs, although I have no clear understanding of how they do.

25

Dude, I appreciate the energy you’ve devoted to this. But you seem to have come into this thread to do exactly two things: argue strenuously against SSM, and deny doing so.

26

Nope. To argue about tactics.

My position is an honest one. I save my lies for things more important than a friggin’ message board. :slight_smile: Believe me or not, I care not. Believe Obama is speaking honestly when he espouses much the same POV or not, I do not care.

Your thread though pal, so I’ll excuse myself.

27

Yes, the legality of marriage changes quite often. Not on a daily basis, but every few years there are significant court rulings. There are lengthy textbooks out there which detail the evolution of the legal institution of marriage in the state of California. You are simply denying reality here. But, hey. What do I know. I only took a California community property class in law school and had to study community property to pass my bar exam.

This is like talking to a brick wall. Even if you gave civil unions the same rights, it is almost impossible to keep the two institutions in sync. I’ve explained why, Miller has explained why. You have not responded to these explanations at all.

Constitutional law is not the same as family law. I have no idea what Obama thinks. Perhaps you can quote where he says that it’s practically possible to keep to separate legal institutions in sync? He did, after all, come out against Prop 8.

Look, if you want to advocate for civil unions, go right ahead. But claiming that civil unions are equal to marriage from a legal standpoint is dishonest.

28

Thanks.

Since the specific purpose of the thread was to hear the opposition reasoning articulated, not to abstractly “argue tactics,” thanks for agreeing to drop the hijack.

29

Could you explain some of the differences between the two under California law? That might help to understand the thrust of your argument on the difficulty of keeping the two in sync.

30

I’m on my way out the door, so I’ll have to find the cite later, but the CA Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage lists nine differences. Most of these aren’t that major, but a major difference is that the Putative Spouse doctrine does not apply to domestic partnerships.

Here’s a nutshell in layman’s terms. CA doesn’t recognize common law marriages (in most circumstances). This doctrine says that if you are living together as husband and wife, even though you’re not married, the court will give you some of the rights of marriage. This is particularly important when a couple has been mixing property.

31

I’m going to revise my nusthell (I was in a hurry). The doctrine says that if you have a reasonable belief that you’re married to someone, then the court will give you some of the rights of marriage. For example, let’s say you marry someone who is already married, but he doesn’t tell you. The court might apply this doctrine for you, so that you get some rights, even though you’re not legally married to the guy.

I’m out.

32

I am in favor of gays getting married just like non gays. I can not think of any reason 10 % of our population should be discriminated for just being true to how they were born. They have the same needs, wants and problems anyone else does. We are aware that often they enter into long term committed relationships. If one gets sick the other often is not allowed to make medical decisions like a hetero would. Property rights often are passed along to someone the person would not want. It is just wrong.

33

Instinctively, I agree with you wholeheartedly. But couldn’t a federal law be crafted in such a way as to make all civil unions–whether they are same-sex or male-female–COMPLETELY equal in every way? Perhaps, in order to throw a bone to the wingnuts, that law could also include a provision that only male-female unions could be called “marriages”.

This of course would only be a temporary compromise, but one that would seem to appease gays that say the most important thing is that their unions have precisely the same benefits that male-female unions do.

In turn, this compromise should mollify those on the right who assert they support full rights for gay unions, but simply want to “protect” the word “marriage.”

Then, in maybe two or four years we could progress to the final stop-- the changing of the legal definition of the word “marriage” to include both same-sex and male-female unions would be almost a foregone conclusion becasue the important law–the granting of full rights and benefits of marriage for SSM save the use of the actual term “marriage”-- would already be in place.

I see it as a 1-2 punch with the first one actually being the KO blow (so the boxing analogy kinda falls apart there but-- you know what I mean).

NOTE: I have edited this post a lot but it still comes across to me as poorly written and confusing. I apologize for that–I am not having a good night. I am posting this anyway because I wanted to enter my thoughts into the fray while they were fresh in the noggin.

34

No. First, because as said marriage is always changing and even if you actually made them equal, they’d diverge rapidly. Second, because a ghetto marriage like that would be easy to target for discriminatory laws, without hurting the people with the privileged version of marriage. and finally, because the anti-SSM marriage people would never go along. The whole point of insisting that they have only "civil unions’ is to lock them in to a ghetto, inferior version of marriage. Probably for decades; like segregation. It’s not a step forward; it’s a firebreak against further progress.

No, it won’t. They are lying. Their motivation is to hurt homosexuals as much as they can get away with.

Compromise doesn’t work with people who are dishonest and evil; the anti-SSM people are one or both, without exception.

35

Oh, for fuck’s sake, dude, can nobody disagree with you honestly? Everyone who holds a different opinion is either evil or lying?
You are not the sole arbiter of everything that is right.

36

When the opinion in question is a bigoted one, of course. I’d say the same about people who held that blacks were inferior, or wanted to deny them marriage.

This isn’t some grey area like tax policy; this is a straightforward example of good versus evil, of bigotry versus non-bigotry. A case where there are the good guys, and the bad guys. Just like segregation, or slavery, or women’s rights - this is a case where the other side is 100%, completely, unjustifiably wrong.

37

I was going to ask about something that maybe you’ve touched on here a little. When one state changes its marriage laws* do other states immediately recognize new marriages performed under these new state laws? If so, is there some federal authority that compels all the separate States to recognize all marriages (remember-- just male/female marriages here) legally performed in any State-- even taking into account that state marriage laws may be constantly shifting and changing?
*For the purpose of this post let’s use laws concerning male/female marriages only.

38

No one is calling Prop 8 supporters cryptobigots. We’re calling them explicit bigots. Because they are. There’s really no getting around that. We could play nice and not point that out to them: after all, they almost certainly don’t think of themselves as bigots. I think most people who voted for Prop 8 have a not-very-well-thought-out rationale as to why it’s okay to favor legislation narrowly targeted at removing the rights of a minority. As long as no one points out that what they are doing is, in fact, bigoted, there’s really not much call for them to examine those beliefs, and see if they square with the concepts of fairness and equality that most people value. I don’t think the gay rights is well-served by allowing these people to wallow in their moral complacency, though. It’s really pretty hard to argue against the idea that opposing SSM is a form of bigotry, and most people don’t want to think of themselves as bigots. By closely associating the anti-marriage position with the term “bigot” at every opportunity, we can taint the entire concept of SSM-opposition with one of the most despised terms in American society. It’s kind of like what Republicans did with the word “liberal,” except in this case, it has the additional virtue of being totally factual.

39

Because we’re not talking about some academic difference of opinion. We’re talking about an issue that affects the lives of real people, in some very fundamental ways. The truth is that there is no rational reason to oppose SSM. Every reason is based on ignorance, fear and dishonesty. If there’s any issue that’s clearly good vs. evil, this is it.

And as far as “the sole arbiter of everything that is right” is concerned . . . reason is the sole arbiter. And we have reason on our side.

40

Not true. The motive here is that “marriage” means one thing to me, not necessarily all good. I have no motivation to hurt homosexuals, at all. I approved of California’s granting marriage licenses for the brief time it did, and if a pro-SSM measure appeared on any ballot I happened to be voting on I would vote for it, but SSM is never going to be the same in my eyes, legal or not.

I do think it’s weird that people get to vote on who gets to be married, though. When did we vote on heterosexual marriage?