Capacitor remarked, ironically:
Which led me to the Eagles:
Sua, a masterful job, as usual.
ExTank, what would be your objections to adoption by a gay couple? Or a gay single? I can hazard a guess, but I’d rather read what you’re actually thinking.
Band name! 
“All wrong-thinking people are right.” - M. Python.
Esprix
…here is not the idea that homosexual couples should be denied marriage but that single hetero persons would enter a homo marriage in an effort to alleviate taxes, health care, etc, etc. Congress does its best to plug loopholes, it doesn’t want to create more. I, for one, would be happy to marry my roommate if I knew I would get tax breaks out the wazoo. He’d be happy to be under my medical plan. And we have been great friends for a while, so one could easily say that we love each other.
The issue lends itself to the issue of sex as a determinate for marriage (to avoid abusing the system which is meant to reward stability, honesty, and so on in relationships) and sex in relationships is something no one wants regulated except the religious nuts. This is why the issue goes forward only slowly.
Before anyone goes ape on the first paragraph, remember that most people are friends with people of the same sex, so pseudo-hetero marriages are surely far more rare than would be faux-homo marriages.
That said, however, I say go for it. Anything to take $$ from the government. Hail Eris and all of that…
Oh, yes - no homosexual has ever thought of marrying someone of the opposite sex just for the tax breaks, to gain entry to the country, to adopt a child, to get health insurance benefits, ad nauseum. Sssh! Don’t tell anyone! It might catch on! :rolleyes:
Get real, then go rent “The Next Best Thing.”
Esprix
Oh, wow…several things here. Does anyone really care when a man and a woman marry for economic/financial reasons? And is there really anything the government can do about that? And if there’s not (which I suspect), why should the government be able to do that (or care about that, for that matter) with same-sex couples?
Second, are you seriously saying that more same-sex faux marriages would occur than currently occur between men and women? Nobody marries for money now? LOL.
Lastly, are you suggesting that gay men don’t interact with female friends at all? LOL again. There are an awful lot of gay men married to women as “beards”(i.e. disguises). Just in the local gay community (small city population), I know at least ten men with children from a dissolved marriage and several who are still married to their wives who go to the bar.
Contrary to your belief, I think pseudo-hetero marriages are likely to continue on a larger scale than pseudo-homo. The taboos are still too strong for most men to buck the tide, even if it will give them some benefits.
I never said it was unthought of, unheard of, or not practiced. MY point, you might note, was that no one in congress intentionally wants to create a system where MORE people can cheat the system. I don’t think it is that hard to understand. The number of people cheating the system would most likely double if laws are passed.
I’m sure they feel bad enough that their stupid laws allow people to cheat their way to more money, less taxes, a citizenship, and so on, and so they are naturally resistant to create a system that begs for it even more than it already does.
Not that I feel it should be ignored, of course, just trying to speak for the non-existant brains of the other side.
[QUOTE]
Oh, wow…several things here. Does anyone really care when a man and a woman marry for economic/financial reasons? And is there really anything the government can do about that? And if there’s not (which I suspect), why should the government be able to do that (or care about that, for that matter) with same-sex couples?[/QUOTE}
Anything not restricted is compulsory? Come on. Of course people maary for money now, people have married for money almost as long as there’s been money! My point is in the government’s loss of tax dollars. I don’t see why its so hard to see.
Besides, if the benefits are the same, who’s a straight guy going to try to set up a sham marriage with - a guy or a girl? Please.
Esprix
First, my apologies for assuming this was your personal viewpoint in my previous post. Sorry! 
Now, to the present post. I find it interesting that they don’t get interested in how the law is being misused until a socially unpopular group starts to mutter about getting a piece of the pie. Then they decide that they don’t want new loopholes. Why not extend the marriage franchise, but put qualifications in place across the board, if that’s what they’re worried about? Institute a mandatory monthly rectum/vagina check to make sure that the couple is getting it on for real, hetero or homo, and couples that obviously aren’t fulfilling their marriage duties are annulled. Why do I think that wouldn’t appeal to someone who calls him/herself anyrandlover? Of course, most of the people fighting for same-sex marriage would be just as happy if the government got out of the marriage recognition business in toto (i.e. don’t recognize straight marriages either). We don’t really care, as long as it’s equally implemented.
Is the Producer of West Wing reading these boards?
Wednesday night, they hit on ENDA, DOMA and the lack of 100,000 unemployed teachers, all issues I have questioned within the last 2 weeks. Is Martin Sheen in here under an alias?
DOMA bad. I don’t get why Clinton would sign such a bill. Was there anything attached to it that he needed to get through?
It basically comes down to economic sanctions against homosexuals. There should be some kind of violation of the Constitution somewhere for that. But that pretty much falls back to adding sexual orientation to the Constitution.
Yeah, a couple hundred thousand votes. Same-sex marriage is still an incredibly volatile issue. It was an election year. Politicians run for the safe side of the issues in election years. That’s a major reason it was rushed out when it was…all of them were thinking “Here’s a guaranteed jump in my polling numbers.” And they were right. I don’t think any incumbent was defeated based on DOMA. Well, except for Dornan, but Orange County just realized they had a genuine helmet-wearing crazy-person in office and did the sensible thing there.
I would. I get along better with men than women most of the time but straight guys as roomates (in my experience) are messy, smelly, and have slutty raver grrls over all the time that make me afraid my stuff will go missing.
Given a choice of who to have a sham marriage with I would pick a man over a woman any time. Only problem would be fighting over the remote.
And how are you going to break that one to your mom?
Mom, I got married to another man. But don’t worry, it’s only for tax reasons.
or
As my false sense of humility prevents from from crowing about such praise from Poly, I think I’ll go with Ex-Tank’s
Freyr answered this question already, but it brings up another reason why some homosexuals might want to push for gay marriage recognition. Not necessarily to just help people get their citizenship, but to keep their foreign partners from having to leave the country. There used to be a lesbian couple at my school where one of the women was an international student who was in the US on a student visa. They both graduated, and the foreign woman had to return to her home country. It didn’t look like it was going to be easy for her to come back right away. These two women had been dating for several years and would have gladly married so that they could stay together, but that wasn’t a possibility.