You’re right, and I apologize.
Thank you, sir. I appreciate both the apology and the fact that this topic raises hackles; anyone with a position that seems to cut against your personal chance to not only spend your life with your love but also receive fair and full legal recognition is bound to be treated with suspicion.
I hope you know that I’m not against that at all. It’s hard enough to find happiness in this world even when society is accepting; I can only imagine how much tougher it gets when the deck is stacked against you. It’s wrong to deny two people the full benefits of legal sanction of their relationship.
But I also hope you can see that while I fully support that end, I don’t want to further break the system by doing so, any more than I’d support the enforcement of a just law by roving bands of vigilantes. HOW we do things is important, and I am convinced that we can reach a just end in a legally correct and principled manner.
- Rick
Aha! So you admit that you are in favor of letting gay people hit children with hammers!
This is a part of the Gay Agenda no one has admitted to - until now.
This is almost as bad as lissener admitting that he only wants gay marriage because he harbors secret desires for George Bush.
Oh well. Someone let me know when spectrum starts doing hisFred Phelps impersonations again.
Regards,
Shodan
Regards,
Shodan
Go eat a pretzel.
See, this is what bothers me the most:
The Churches didn’t have it in the first place!
There is two ways one can go here.
-
Admit that tradition is not a good reason to keep marriage one man and one woman, or
-
Pay very close attention to the millennia-old tradition people so dearly want to keep intact.
The truth is, as many have pointed out, that marriage vastly predates the Christian religion. As well, in Greek and Roman times, marriage was a civil contract, not primarily a religious one. So. Either we feel free to change it because who cares about tradition, or we feel free to change it because the tradition has changed in the past. I suppose a third option would be to revert to making marriage a civil contract between a man and the potential wife’s guardian, but I sure hope no one is arguing that.
It amazes me how such staunch traditionalists have such short memories.
Actually, I’d like to add something else I didn’t think of, um… 4 minutes ago.
Marriage has changed vastly in the past 200 or so years, and this is exactly why we’re having gay marriage issues now. In Greek times, for example, homosexuality was accepted in certain societies, but gay marriage was never present. Why?
Because marriage was a practical contract. It was a transaction to further political alliances, to get rid of daughters and, most basically, to produce children. Love was not a factor.
Now, of course, love is the basis of marriage (in North America at least, in many other countries marriage is still as stated above). That was a much larger change than anything same-sex marriage could ever be. Now that we agree love should be the basis of marriage, how can we deny couples in love the benefits of being recognized as such?
Well, just yesterday, the New York Daily News published an editorial about Bush’s announcement, and they said (paraphrasing): “Eventually, legislatures will come to pass laws recognizing civil unions with some or all of the same rights and responsibilities of marriage.” I’ll get the cite if you wish.
But the point is that debate has started and already those in the media who help form public opinion are suggesting that “some” rights are or should be as acceptable as “all” rights of marriage. So already, the goalposts are being moved away from true equality towards something less. “Equal” means “equal” - not “almost equal”. By the time the debate is finished, civil unions will enjoy only half or less of the 1049 rights which are guaranteed to marriage by law.
The forces of darkness will never accept separate-but-equal, but will pay lip service until they enshrine second-class status in the constitution, after which they can move on to other things, leaving gays and lesbians in the dust. Civil unions will NEVER be equal to marriage.
And gays and lesbians should not have to beggar they neighbor for what the Constitution gives them - equal protection of the law.
I’m looking for a solution for this country, and in this country, with its Judeo-Christian tradition, the institution of marriage was one that, regardless of specific faith, most people could understand and agree with. Times have changed, and the divison of Church and State now needs to be better defined, as we realize that Judeo-Christianity isn’t all there is.
I’m sorry, but I wasn’t interested in tracing the roots of marriage back to the beginning of time- rather, I was looking at it in the context this country, where I live, and where there is currently a problem where some are being denied civil rights based on what I see as the State trying to protect an institution for traditional (read: “moral”) reasons.
My solution is only an attempt to remove morality judgements from the State’s decision process, at least in this instance. The fact is, some sort of compromise is going to be needed, and obviously, some people have alot of emotion tied up in a word. It just so happens that the majority (IMO- no stats here) of these people are people that could still go to their respective places of worship to be “married”, while the State would best serve its function by have an institution that dealt strictly with social and financial aspects of what today’s marriage bestows upon couples. This institution would be bllind to gender, while the Church (mind you- I use the term as a generic term for any religious institution) can decide what rules it wants to follow for its members.
As I said above, I beliee these two choices to be simply untrue. What is it called, the fallacy of the excluded middle? We’re dealing with a problem for this country- not the whole world, and not for all time.
And that is precisely as far as today’s state should be handling it. Unfortunately, alot of people have more vested in the term. So let them have it. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference in the State’s eyes- as far as it was concerned, the term would have no legal meaning anymore.
It amazes me how some people don’t realize that everything’s not black and white, and in real life, compromises need to be made. It also amazes me that I was just called a “staunch traditionalist”. I think you may be jumping to extremely wrong conclusions.
Oh and BTW- you’re sorely mistaken if you think that most “staunch traditionalists” would agree with my proposal. 
This is the part that infuriates me. If you think Loving was a correct decision, then you admit that marriage is a right that is protected by the Consititution from invidious discrimination. It’s absurd to then say that it “breaks the system” to extend that decision in the case of same-sex marriages.
smoke, I guess I didn’t come across very well. I didn’t mean to be arguing against you specifically, and I wasn’t even commenting on the rest of your post. I have seen the attitude of ownership of marriage by the churches in many other circumstances, and I was picking a bone with that, not with you. Sorry!
Although I disagree with you that we can put an arbitrary limit on how far back “tradition” goes. If you want to look back, look back and don’t ignore history.
Ah, then. Well, I understand where you’re coming from , and thanks for the clarification.
My problem is that I’m not entirely sure that if this issue comes to a vote that it will be decided favorably for same-sex marriage. Unfair and unconstitutional, I agree. But clearly, it’s an emotional issue. I’m hoping that the right compromise can present a win-win situation. There’s no denying that a certain element on either side is never going to be happy, but it just seems to me that my compromise would be far more desirable than a) losing everything from a Federal amendment to the Constitution and/or b) losing everything to a popular vote.
And we definitely agree to disagree on the scope of tradition.
As I’ve said many times before, I believe the Fourteenth Amendment protects against racial discrimination, based on the legislative history of its enactment. You don’t believe that, but in support of my theory, I have pointed out that the Nineteenth Amendment was necessary to guarantee women the vote. If your expanisive view of the Fourteenth Amendment was correct, then the Nineteenth would not have been necessary. That it WAS necessary is evidence that my view of the Fourteenth Amendment is the correct one: that it was intended to prevent invidious RACIAL discrimination, not all invidious discrimination.
- Rick
And the reason why the word “race” does not appear in the text of the amendment which was designed to prevent only invidious racial discrimination is…?
Still waiting to hear your take on Zablocki and Turner, by the way.
The 19th Amendment provides evidence of entrenched misogyny in the early 20th century not that our developing notions of Liberty as enshrined in the 14th are limited to what the 19th century writers envisioned.
Race being the target of the amendment was absolutely clear at the time, based on the legislative history. And although I concede it does not explicitly say ‘race,’ I hope you concede that it must have SOME limits, or it renders the enforcement of every single law useless, since the entire basis of law is to draw distinctions between different classes of people.
[quote
Still waiting to hear your take on Zablocki and Turner, by the way.[/QUOTE]
Zablocki - wrongly decided. Wisonsin should have every right to refuse deadbeat parents a marriage certificate. But since it was decided in the late 1970s, IIRC, I would respect it as stare decisis. That doesn’t mean I would want to compound the error by extending it now. And since Turner relied on the federal constitutional “right to marry” that Zablocki created, it owes its life to tbe bad decision in Zablocki. “It is a foolish man that builds his house upon the sand.”
- Rick
Of course the Fourteenth has limits, which is why there are different levels of scrutiny applied in different situations. Are you suggesting that every non-racial decision grounded in the Fourteenth Amendment was wrongly decided?
Zablocki didn’t create the constitutional right to marry. Marriage as a fundamental right was recognized by the Court both in Loving and in Skinner. So that rather undercuts your argument on Turner. Why was the Court in error on Zablocki?
Bricker:
So in your imaginary universe in which gay marriage is left up to the states, what happens next? So gay marriage becomes legal in California and not in Utah? And then gay couples, married, citizens, parents, who life in California are afraid to travel to Utah for fear that, should one of them have a life-threatening illness while in Utah, the other won’t be able to make spousal decisions?
Does that sound even remotely practical to you?
If you’re (a) supportive, in your own personal ethical system, of the rights of gays to marry, and (b) a fan of strict constructionism, it seems to me that the infamous Bricker Amendment ought to be one which states clearly and unequivocally that discrimination based on sexual preference is illegal. That’s far more likely to pass (albeit, in 50 years or so) than the Bricker Amendment you’ve proposed, and, better still, is Good as opposed to Evil.
That’s a chimera of yours having no basis in reality. As Otto points out here, and I have elsewhere, the Courts have articulated the foundation of determining whether distinctions are Constitution with the Three-Tiered Analysis.
The only sticking point I have is a strong conviction that the word ‘marriage’ means a union of opposite sexes. But I am willing to admit that this is grounded in religious practice, and I’d be willing to solve the problem by removing the state completely from the business of marriage.
So the new Bricker amendment could certainly say, in clause 1, that discrimination based on sexual preference is illegal, and in clause 2 says that neither the United States nor any state shall purport to sanction ‘marriage’ - merely civil, contractual unions.
So the state may simply sanction civil unions between any two adults. If those adults have a desire to be “married,” they need to see a priest, minister, rabbi, shaman, whatever.
How’s that?