Word, and I’ll go further.
There are no decent and rational reasons to support a gay marriage ban. There are reasons that are rational, but indecent. There are reasons that are decent, but irrational. But I’ll reiterate what I said in the other thread on Prop 8: opposition to the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples is either irrational or pointlessly cruel, close enough to actually evil that the distinction is meaningless.
I’m open to being proved wrong, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Hey, I don’t make it up, I’m just reporting it.
I realize that, but I always find it extra amusing when people who are making shit up to support unsupportable positions cite studies they haven’t read, or researchers they don’t listen to.
As some people I know have pointed out, this whole thing is just another incarnation of the separate-but-equal doctrine. Gays can have civil unions, just like 60 years ago blacks could drink from the colored people’s fountain.
The same, but at the same time very, very different. Very.
Sure enough. Better than that, I’ll give you an example of someone I know:
This is a person who believes what it says in the Bible and takes it at its’ word, yet this person feeds the hungry (in a mission) clothes the naked (in several clothing drives) houses the homeless (with habitat for humanity) and is a nurse full time, Because of the way she was raised, the things she was taught to believe and the faith that has resides in her soul, she thinks gay marriage wrong and doesn’t believe in the support of it. No matter how wrong you may see what she believes, the fact remains that her belief is honest, her life decent and her ideas resonable, at least to her, and what else can you go on but what you know to be true? Especially, if in her case, you’re already doing as much good as you can.
The problem is, we know that it’s likely that religious zeal and general asshattery have driven these measures underground. However, not everyone that fails to match the leftie standard of what everyone should think, feel or believe, is evil, wrong or bigoted in the most common sense of the word. Some people honestly believe, even though that belief may be, by logic, in error, that ssm isn’t right. That does not make them evil.
**Thanks to Skald the Rhymer in the other thread.
But if she voted for this, she’s NOT “doing as much good as she can.” And hurting or oppressing other people in the name of your faith - your self indulgent delusion, in other words - is NOT “honest, decent, or reasonable”. She’s also just demonstrated that she isn’t a good person and never was - she’s just obeying orders.
Would you be so willing to defend her if she had just voted to ban the marriage of black people ? Or of Jews ?
Yes, it does. They are supporting bigotry, and harming people who haven’t harmed them or anyone else. This is outright malignant, and yes, evil.
But that doesn’t address Miller’s question at all. You haven’t given any honest, decent or reasonable excuses to support a gay marriage ban. Instead, you’ve cited a person that you find honest, decent, and reasonable, and who also supports a gay marriage ban because of how she was raised. That isn’t the same thing at all.
You could find decent, honest, and reasonable people who also happen to hold every belief under the sun because of how they were raised. There were decent, honest and respectable people who believed that witches should be burned for the good of the community. Even if those people were also charitable and pious and generous and generally pillars of virtue otherwise, that still doesn’t mean that witch-burning was reasonable or justified.
Hell, I have relatives who are decent, honest and generally reasonable, except they’d probably never speak well of me again if I were to marry outside my race. Why? Well, they were raised that way. I would argue that they’re basically good people, but that doesn’t mean that their anti-miscegnation beliefs make a goddamn lick of sense or should be tolerated by others in the slightest.
I never yet claimed there was such a reason. Miller is asking for an answer to a question I never asked and/or a reaction to a statement I never made.
The fact is that I don’t give a fiddlers fuck about gay marriage one way or the other. I don’t think the gov’t should be meddling about in that game. I think further that if the inital position of the proponents was softer instead of demanding, that we’d be looking at an altogether different thing.
The fact is we live in a nation that is, in its majority, Christian. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean what the people who identify themselves as Christian think it means, or they simply choose not to follow the lessons. It sucks, yes, but you have to know the lay of the land before you step one foot on the battlefield. The loudest of the ssm proponents got so loud, so militant and so outspoken it motivated the people who were against it and those on the fence to bring up these propositions. The question I have for SSM advocates is; if you get the same protections under the law with civil unions, why can’t that be good enough for now? Of course, it should be equal. It’s not, and you can’t force it to be, you’ve got to be consistently diplomatic and unfailingly nice whenever change of this magnitude is desired. The loudmouths and nutters on both sides are the reasons for both of these props.
What I said, or at least what I wanted to say, was that it’s all about intent. I think people can reasonably believe that something is wrong without them being bigots, or evil, or whatever perjorative you choose to apply. People can come from a place of reason, honesty and even decency and still be uneducated about certian things. I was one of those people in the "adam and eve not adam and steve " crowd until I got to know some gay people. Then my views changed. That took time, and I didn’t have years of religious programming to overcome.
To add, I think it does a disservice to the civil rights struggle in the 60’s to compare same sex marriage. If there were straight-only restaurants, coffee shops, laundromats, then you’re talking apples and oranges. This is a facet of life that not everyone will take part in, you can choose to marry or not, you can’t choose to be black. These things are not equal.
I voted No in Florida, but I have a theory as to why it passed.
I think a lot of first time voters voted for Obama and left the rest of the ballot blank. Either that, or they didn’t turn the ballot over (the amendments were on the back.)
So they went in, voiced their support for Obama, and went on their merry way without looking to see what else needed to be decided (doesn’t explain Alan Grayson though, unless they just didn’t turn the ballot over.)
Going on what we’ve discovered from the California ballot initiative, it appears that the gadjillion extra African-Americans who turned out for this election are overwhelmingly anti-SSM. I don’t think it could have passed without their support; remember, California only requires a simple majority for an amendment, but our constitution requires 60% +1, and CA Prop 8 just passed, while Prop 2 passed quite convincingly (62%).
It is somewhat odd that it passed when it appeared though it would fail by at least 5%, though.
The Grayson thing is easier to explain - the RNC ran a buttload of attack ads calling Grayson greedy, among other things. I didn’t care a fig whether Keller won or not- he’s done alright by me, generally- but I was rooting for him to lose after I saw a couple dozen of those.
Your logic here is horribly flawed. You’re comparing apples and oranges because your analogy is wrong. Essentially, you’re saying:
You can’t choose not to be black. Therefore, it is wrong for blacks to be prohibited from patronizing certain businesses.
You can choose not to get married. Therefore, it is okay for gays to be prohibited from marrying.
However, it should go like this:
You can’t choose not to be black. Therefore, it is wrong for blacks to be prohibited from patronizing certain businesses.
You can’t choose not to be gay. Therefore, it is wrong for gays to be prohibited from marrying.
Unless you’re arguing that convenient dry cleaning is a more fundamental right than marriage, which is a) wrong, and b) not evident in your post.
You can’t choose whether or not to be black? Well, if Michael Jackson is ever in court again, they’ll only need to find eleven additional people who’ve never heard of him. 
More seriously, this “logic” says that it’s perfectly OK to exclude on the basis of religion, which is clearly a matter of individual choice.
First, I think that all unions ought to be civil ones and that marriages should be dealt with by whatever church chooses to officiate over them and that it shouldn’t matter to the government if the people joining in a union are of the same sex, as long as they have the same protections.
Second, my argument is that the wholesale less-than-human, second-class-citizen discrimination of black Americans in this country less than 50 years ago is not the same thing as failing to allow, or in fact prohibiting gays to marry. Which again, is not the same as hanging a black man from a tree for whistling at a white woman or burning crosses on the front lawn. You may see it that way, and certianly there are paralells, however the two things are separated by a towering enormity of differences. It has never been acceptable to purchase and own a a homosexual. You cannot think that they are the same. You simply cannot.
As stated, I have no dog in the SSM fight, however you will never, EVER meet your objective as an advocate of SSM with the issue and one hand and a stick in the other.
You may call people bigots, you may call them homophobes, you may call them whatever you want, all that does is reinforce their position that you are at odds when you are not. There is an enormous hill to climb and many rivers to cross before SSM is dealt with in an effective and fair way and the majority of the people who need to have the necessary education, brought into the fold.
The opponents of SSM are the religious right, they have very effective tactics to educate and communicate. The folks promoting SSM aren’t being effective, they aren’t winning hearts and minds, they aren’t gaining ground. The proof is in the loss. If the pro SSM crowd would get off of their sopaboxes and learn something from their opposition, they may have a better chance.
No Steve, it isn’t OK, however it is HAPPENING and has to be FIXED. You can’t DO that when you’re beating someone over the head with the idea, no matter how right it is.
Religion is indeed a matter of choice, but you know full well the power it has and how dangerous it can be to those who believe faithfully and how much more exponentially dangerous it can be to those who do not.
You’re still not understanding the analogy, though.
Anti-miscegenation laws weren’t repealed because white people felt bad about slavery. They were repealed because they were illogical, unconstitutional, and wrong. Nobody is suggesting that gay people are regularly hung from trees or have to put out burning crosses on the lawn; you’re arguing a point that nobody is bothering to make. The only parallel between gays and African-Americans is anti-miscegenation laws, although gay people are sometimes killed just for being gay, as you well know.
Ah. I was referring to the exchange where Miller challenged:
And you replied:
The response, “Sure enough,” made it seem like you were claiming there were such reasons.
Perhaps not directly, but the paralells have been drawn in this thread and they’re so far off base that it’s almost sickening. Of course gay people have been killed for being gay, but it’s never been legal. I see your logic more clearly though and I think we’re kind of talking past each other. Anti-miscegenation laws represent the central problem with a government like ours over which religion casts such a looming shadow. My only argument in this thread has been that people can believe honestly that banning SSM is a valid viewpoint and not be wingnuts or whackjobs. I think many of those people, if they have the chance to meet, socialize with and get to know some gay people, they’ll change their tune. The people they see advocating this though are sometimes militant, loud and angry. While they’ve got the right to be, I think they’re doing more harm than good.
Here’s where the disconnect lies for the rest of us- you say it’s a valid viewpoint, then essentially assert that it’s based on ignorance (and, therefore, prejudice).
In what sense of the word, then, is it a “valid” argument?