(I hope this is the proper forum)
I’d just like to know if there’s anyone here posting who is against gay marriage and civil unions for gay couples as well. If so, why? Or do you know anyone who is against both-what are their reasons?
Not I- against gay marriage, but for civil unions. People should be able to make legal arrangements regarding the people who are most significant in their lives. On the other hand, they don’t have the right to demand a radical redefinition of a social-cultural institution (they do however have the right to work towards the society/culture redefining that institution).
Even the President that many of you dislike so much is for civil unions. I think you have to be a fairly hardcore homophobe to be against civil unions. In my opinion marriage is merely a contract and we should limit government interfernce in contracts between right-minded adults as much as possible.
I’m actually against heterosexual “civil unions” that the state recognizes (marriage). The way to resolve this whole issue, in my mind, is to remove the state sanctioning of the heterosexual marriage, rather than add state sanctioning of homosexual marriage. Why, as a married man, I should get tax and other benefits than a non-married man is not entitled to I am not sure (of course the historic answer is that it promotes the traditional family with lots of children to keep the state strong, but that may be an outmoded reason at this point and it certainly won’t please gays).
To say marriage is a contract itself casts judgment. Marriage should be whatever the couple wants it to be. It may be a religious joining, it may be a contract, it may be a convient arrangement. Just as the state should not limit how individuals cohabitate and spend their time, so should individuals who cohabitate and spend their time together not try to impress their version of that relationship on anyone else, or the state itself by asking for hand-outs because of their living status. I don’t need homosexuals or heterosexuals telling me what my marriage should mean or how it should be recognized by the state.
I would oppose both if I opposed one (which I do).
Without re-arguing the whole debate over whether homosexuality is “normal,” I think that those who believe that it isn’t normal/beneficial/inborn or what have you share a concern about what they see as a trend to “homosexual norming.” I don’t think that calling a quasi-marriage-like institution by a different name avoids the (perceived) problem of government endorsement of a “special” relationship between two people of the same sex. (Whether government should be in the business of conferring legal status or advantages based on any elective affinities is an interesting question; in the background from which I come, marriage is primarily a sacramental transaction, and I don’t know that I’d absolutely require the government’s ratification of my personal/religious commitment).
Look, civil unions came about precisely because the electorate wouldn’t go for “gay marriage,” which was the first goal. I would assume the homosexuals who wanted “marriage,” but had to settle for “mere” civil unions, would continue to want “marriage” and would work to make “civil unions” as close to marriage, in terms of status, rights, and obligations, as they could. So if one opposes “marriage,” I’m not sure why he’d be comfortable upon being told, “Hey, it’s not marriage or anything, just as exact a replica of marriage as we can manage.” Legally, too, it’s not difficult to imagine the following sequence of events. Homosexuals lobby for marriage, are told that’s not on the cards, but they can have the “lesser” civil unions. The public, mollified by the belief that civil unions are definitely something well short of marriage, breathes a sigh of relief, and eventually (let us assume – I don’t see this happening too soon in Mississippi) comes to accept civil unions as a “safe” and non-threatening alternative to real marriage. Homosexual activists promptly return to their favorite well, the judiciary, and argue that the universal acceptance of civil unions shows that homosexual relationships are undeniably recognized as meriting government endorsement, but that their equal protection rights are being denied because the endorsement is of an inferior variety. Thus, civil unions must either be abolished and replaced with marriage, or endowed with each and every incident of marriage.
I’m also not persuaded by the need to confer status on a relationship. A lot (if not all that can be done in a marriage) can be accomplished to formalize the relationship between two homosexuals (or two friends of any stripe) by contract, powers of attorney, estate planning, etc. No, it’s not marriage, but then neither is your relationship with your godson or your best friend, and people manage.
On the other hand, some opposing opinions really are just noise. I have an aunt who believes that finding a cure for migraine headaches is not only the number one health issue in the country, but is or ought to be the number one overall public policy objective. She votes on this basis, God help us. I don’t think her views are helpful.
More to the point, she represents someone who’s opinion is not only objectively stupid, but not subject to the dialectic form of political discourse that the optimists among us believe makes differing opinions okay. Implicit in the idea that it’s okay for you to say black when I say white is our idealistic assumption that at the end of a long battle, one of us may eventually be won over to the other’s side, no matter how far apart we started. It’s not guaranteed, and we know there’ll always be irreconcilable differences, but the evolution (devolution, if you prefer) of various people we know, or public figures, from liberal to conservative, from reactionary to progressive, etc., at least inspires us that the dialectic works some of the time. With people like my aunt, there’s no hope, because she’s not trafficking in policy or reason as we recognize them.
Please ignore – I just called into question my own right to vote by posting this in the wrong thread. I swear it was a great response to the other thread . . . .
PLEASE-I do not want to turn this into another thread about the presidential election. Talk about the votes to ban both gay marriage and civil unions, but let’s leave the presidental election OUT OF IT.
I have seen some radical conservatives (Not anyone HERE, at least not so far), say that civil unions are merely gay marriage with another name. I wanted to debate about that.
I came close to saying it, or at least suggested that they are (a) close enough to “marriage” and (b) likely to always be pushed to become even closer, by those dissatisfied with “mere” civil union status, such that a person concerned with “gay marriage” (whether he’s right or wrong to be thus concerned) logically might well be concerned with civil unions for same/similar reasons.
{insert obligatory “marriage is not a Christian institution, invention, or otherwise exclusive thing so blow it out your tight asses, along with the stuck crammed up there” message here}
Hardly “obligatory,” in a thread whose OP seemed to be asking whether people opposed both “marriage” and “civil unions,” without regard to whether such opposition was a Good Thing, but now that you’ve made it clear you’re on the side of the angels . . . .
I really have no idea what any of the posts in this thread other than the OP and mine are talking about.
Kind of impressive in its own strange way.
So, if the government were to get rid of marriage altogether you’d be okay with that? I mean after all if you can formalize the relationship by contract, powers of attorney, estate planning, etc then marriage isn’t really needed.
What a surprise that the only poster who claims to oppose both SSM and civil unions has an “88” in his user name. That’s kind of self-discrediting all by itself.
There is no such thing as “homosexual norming,” btw. That’s a backwards way to look at it. It’s marginilization and discrimination that are the problem, not the simple protection of civil rights. One religious group does not get to decide what is “normal” for everybody else. Other people don’t have tp prove that they’re “normal” in order to receive civil rights, you would have to show a reason that abridging someone else’s rights are somehow necessary in order to protect the public from harm. “We don’t want society to say homosxuality is normal” is not a legal justification for anything, it’s just a personal hang up that you either need to get help for or simply learn to live with.
That would be a real gotcha, except I already raised the possibility myself:
I’m receptive to the idea that when heterosexual marriage has benefits, possibly unique benefits, that society has traditionally recognized and even codified in law. (The government routinely advantages and disadvantages other lifestyle choices that it deems more or less utility-enhancing, as in subsidizing homeownership through the tax code; no one seems to think renters are fundamentally victimized thereby).
However . . . I’ve seen how things degenerate to absurdity when everyone starts pleading for “special status.” Killing heterosexual (civil) marriage recognition, and all civil marriage, (as long as religious marriages won’t be interfered with)? Wouldn’t bother me as much as you might think.
What the hell? Farrakhan is a member now? Do I have to conjure with numerology as well? Weird stuff.
If something is widely regarded as not normal, and someone comes along and says that we have to treat it as if it is normal, then it is fair to say that is is in some sense being “normalized.” Again, I cannot help the fact that a majority of our fellow citizens (of almost all religions, not “one religious group”) have until very recently, and perhaps up through today, rejected the notion that homosexuality is as “normal” as heterosexuality. They may be wrong, but you must know that “normative” and “norm” are descriptive terms for that which is accepted in a society – period.
Again, it’s preposterous to pretend that (a) law and policy and (b) the moral convictions (wait, lets call them “personal hang ups”) of the people on whose behalf that law and policy is enacted ought to be, or indeed ever were, two completely, or even substantially, discrete bodies of doctrine. Arrogant, too, because it assumes that your “neutral” policy preference as to what ought to be recognized as “civil rights” has nothing to do with your own completely subjective views of morality/ethics/fairness. What “civil rights” a particular society will or should recognize is inherently dependent on the values of the society’s members; it is the question, not a facile premise for the conclusion that your chosen version of civil rights is the only decent one, from which others’ views are only an irrelevant “personal hang up.”
Do you really not know what 88 symbolizes? :dubious:
Just in case you honestly don’t know (and I have my doubts) it’s a pretty common signifier those who hold white supremacist convictions.
To the real point, civil rights are protected by the Constitution and are not subject to popular referendums. It doesn’t matter how many morons think that homosexuality is “abnormal” ( a meaningless word to begin with, but as far as it goes, also contradicted by all scientific study), they are not permitted to abridge the constitutional right of equal protection for anyone else.
Maybe you’d want to stop hanging around with those white supremacists and picking up all their numerological obsessions, but suit yourself.
Again, you’re question begging. “Civil rights” are protected by (a) the Constitution and (b) statutes, including those enacted by the Legislature and/or referenda (or haven’t you heard of the Civil Rights Act?).
It’s not just the legal process you’re not fully following. It’s the backwards logic. Something is a “civil right” only when a positive law or the Constitution renders it such. It makes no sense, to anyone who actually has to deal with the law, to speak of free-floating or pre-existing rights; rights exist, in a legally meaningful way, when someone is willing to guarantee their enforcement. The existence of any enforceable constitutional “civil right” to sodomy is approximately one year old. In the two hundred plus years of the Republic, every court of last resort and every legislature declined to recognize a federal civil right to sodomy grounded in equal protection (this includes the Nine Greatest Unelected Geniuses On Earth, as recently as the 1980s). It is true that those Nine Geniuses have, within the past two seconds, speaking in geologic terms, now flip-flopped and decided that the Constitution definitely and always provided a civil right to sodomy. Which, by your logic, renders every court and Legislature to come before “morons.”
Now, that is what I call reasoned legal analysis and political argumentation. We’ve got name calling, question begging, would-be intellectual snobbery and anti-clericalism, and the gratuitous argumentum ad Hitelrum, all in a few short paragraphs.
All we were light on was substance.
All citzens are guaranteed the same rights under the 14th amendment. These rights can not be abridged by legislation or by a majority. Period.
If it were as simple as you imply (“Period.”), then the “constitutional right to sodomy” would have been recognized by every court and legislature from 1865 onwards. I know, I know, until you and Justice O’Connor came along, they were, every last one of them, morons and bigots, bigots and morons, all.
I suspect you haven’t read the Fourteenth Amendment; I know you haven’t understood it. The phrase “same rights” doesn’t appear in it, although our ancestors were pretty good at writing English when they wanted to. The phrase “equal protection of the laws” does appear. Equal protection of the laws does not mean that each citizen has the same rights, or blind people would be piloting commercial aircraft and men would have the right to use the ladies’ restroom. It means that similarly situated people shall be treated similarly. You believe that homosexuals are “similarly situated” in all relevant respects with heterosexuals. This is a policy preference for which you’re entitled to argue. Others would, and have, argued that equal protection would be satisfied when a law against homosexual conduct was enforced against all persons.
Arguments of the latter variety, as I’ve pointed out, prevailed in essentially all legal fora, and were black letter law, until one year ago. You are free to believe that the dozens of courts and hundreds of legislatures (as well as the millions and millions of your fellow citizens – I know, I know, again, each last one a cretin incapable of thinking on a level with you, but bear with me) who believed, and still believed, that the equal protection doctrine does not clearly mandate as a necessity recognition of homosexuality as a constitutional civil right were wrong. In fact, I’d wager you that forty years ago, many a homosexual activist or lawyer would have had no concept of a constitutionally-enforceable right to sodomy or to “gay marriage” – it simply wasn’t in the cards, and no prudent handicapper or reader of judicial tea leaves would have predicted that it could conjured out of the Constitution.
No matter how strong your conviction that its eventual conjuring was a Good Thing, though, you are not free to pretend that there is no other logical, legally-plausible, or conceivable conclusion that anyone of reason could, or could ever, have reached – because millions of people, including those with legal training that may even approach yours in its rigor, did.