Just to be clear, I opposed the amendment, I voted against the amendment, I’m embarrassed to say I’m from Missouri.
But there are way too many people in here that feel this vote somehow proves that “religion” has too much influence over voters.
Yes, “religion” has pushed the pro-life issue. “Religion” also pushed Prohibition. “Religion” pushed the antiwar effort during Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, the abolition of slavery and the social welfare drives at the end of the 19th Century. After 9/11 “religion” proclaimed loudly that not all Muslims were terroists.
My God doesn’t hate gays.
I am a person of faith. Please don’t read that as “idiot homophobic bigot.”
Boy, way to reach for the wrong metaphor. Thirty years of heated rhetoric and clinic bombings may not have been good for our country, but it was certainly better than thirty years where abortion was illegal. Is there going to be a backlash because of the push for gay marriage? Almost certainly. Is there ever going to be a point in this nation where gay marriage is going to be accepted without a backlash? Probably not. Is this a good enough reason not to push for gay marriage now? Absolutely not.
I didn’t get the impression that your viewpoint was motivated by bigotry or homophobia. I got the impression that it was just being reactionary, not realistic. Civil unions and same-sex marriage are not mutually exclusive, and it’s wrong to imply that they are. Pushing for gay marriage does nothing at the expense of civil unions or domestic partnerships. But they’re not the same thing; couples in civil unions are not married.
And people shouldn’t be suggesting that same-sex couples who are truly in love and want to be married, should settle for a civil union. Because it’s convenient, because it’s easier, or because the alternative makes people uncomfortable.
That’s a fatuous question. They’ve always wanted to live the rest of their lives together. Prejudices, reactionary thinking, and invasive governmental policies only allowed them to solidify that bond in that brief window of time.
I completely agree. We need to contact people outside of the GLBT community, in exactly the places you recommend. One problem with the CDL campaign, IMO, was their reluctance to come out visibly as a gay campaign and dare to step outside the box. Here’s one example: My partner and a friend (in frustration with the lack of response to their ideas about delivering flyers in more public areas, like those you suggested) printed up some literature and (with the half-hearted permission of the CDL) tried to distribute it at a local grocery store. A customer called them perverts and followed up by contacting the CDL office with the same invective and asking them not to leaflet again, saying that they ruined his shopping experience (I’m not making this up). The response of the CDL team was to contact my partner and tell her not to do it again – not explain why or offer other options. Apparently, they did not want ruffle any feathers or provoke negative responses.
Granted, there may be legal issues with distributing information in certain areas and the need to obtain permission. However, this information was either not gathered by the CDL or it was not passed on to the volunteers. As far as we know, this option was not pursued.
So, we ended up distributing flyers to previously known gay friendly businesses (which, by the way, had no flyers until we stopped by). At the time, we thought the CDL knew better – but apparently they did not.
I am a grad student on a campus. I did some work on my own to get information out, but did not have the support of the larger organization behind me. One problem with contacting people on campus over the summer is that many people are gone and student groups are not active. Nevertheless, more could have been done (by me, I’ll admit, and others).
Low-class? How so? Honestly curious here, Mockingbird. What have I said to make you think that?
I was just wondering about the issue of marrying simply because it was possible to do so. I figured it was part of the discussion. Sorry to “piss on parades,” but I agree that getting married simply because you can is foolish. I’m not actually suggesting that’s in any way the case with Shoshana.
Well, I don’t know why it should make a difference. One those who are against it are, from what I can see, against it for religious reasons. And they’re certainly free to continue their belief system no matter what the law calls it. Especially since the move in this country is supposedly toward a separation of church and state.
The reason that I was wondering, and I probably didn’t put it very well (I have a bad habit of posting late at night :D), was more along the lines of what another poster said. Why NOT “get your toe in the door” so to speak with a Civil Union if it will get you what you want?
It is not fun to have to weigh one’s faith against one’s friends, it’s a heartbreaking, gut wrenching every day decision. So give those having the rough decision between their God, and their gay friends and loved ones a little leeway.
Since the protest against it is religious, and it’s the law, rather than the churches that are legitimizing gay marriage, seems like a win-win to me. But then, as I said, I haven’t been following the issue very closely. And I tend to view my so-called fellow christians with a rather irritated attitude, seems like much they do just turns people off which isn’t the idea God had in mind at all.
Even the bible says to separate God’s law and man’s law (poor wording, I am by no means a theologian), they’re not listening to their own beliefs. Grrrrrrrrrr
Neat story. Wish I’d have felt the same way when I got married.
I’m glad to have a personal face on it. From watching the news, I just had such a “damn fool kids” reaction to it. From the presentation and articles it seemed as if the marriages were about the protest rather than the marriage.
No not at all. I was speaking strictly of terminology. It seems, aftter reading the answers to my question, that the reason it’s important to have a gay marriage called the same thing, is the principle of the thing?
In other words, is it the “why shouldn’t gay unions have the same term” of it, more than some of the practical reasons (like the changing of all the laws on record :eek: ) given?
I’d say there are two good reasons for opening marriage up to gays instead of creating a seperate civil union classification: one is practical, one is principle.
Practically speaking, opening up marriage is just so much easier. All of the laws that apply to heterosexual couples will automatically be applied to homosexual couples, and all the centuries of precedent that protect those laws. All this requires is writing a law that says, in effect, “Marriage can be between people of the same gender,” and you’re pretty much done.
Civil unions, on the other hand, would require creating a duplicate law for every right, priviledge, and protection currently conveyed by marriage. And you can bet that passing each and every one of those individual laws is going to be a titanic struggle, and there’s no way we’re going to win all of them. Plus, there’s no precedent to the new laws. They’re open to all sorts of lawsuits challenging them, suits that have long since been settled in regards to marriage. The whole process is insanely complicated, massively expensive, ridiculously drawn out, and the end result still won’t be total equity.
And then there’s the principle of the thing, which is that changing the laws to recognize gay marriage as identical, in rights and in terminology, to straight marriage is a powerful message of acceptance and tolerance. Civil unions would single gays out as a group that for some reason requires seperate legislation. Even if its for something as trivial as what you call the governmental recognition of an intimate relationship, gays are set aside as legally different from everyone else, and I think that’s kinda scary. Calling it marriage erases any legal differences between gays and straights. We’re all just citizens, with exactly the same rights and responsibilities, free to hate each other for whatever fucked up reason we care to come up with, but equal in the eyes of our government.
Well, that all made perfect sense, AND allows religious beliefs to stand.
But at Mr. moto said, I fear that it will have to take the civil union step first in order for it to be done as expiditiously as possible. Otherwise, it will still keep getting hung up as it did in Missouri.
If people know that this is a legal definition and union, and has no bearing on their religious beliefs, I think that could help push it forward for those holding out for reasons of faith. I haven’t even seen that idea discussed at all in the media. Has it been?
There’s an ancient saying I just made up: “If you want the moon, ask for the moon and the stars.” It may very well be that we’ll end up having to settle for civil unions. But if we ask for civil unions, who knows what we’ll have to settle for?
This second stance was, believe it or not, pretty similar to the one most often presented by the gay organization devoted to defeating the amendment, the Constitution Defense League. It’s all in the name. It was amazing to me how “gay marriage” was taken out of the argument. For many people that was the point of this whole debate. Here’s an excerpt from one of the pamphlets mailed out by the CDL:
This was the only pamplet sent out by the CDL in the mail and the content of the one and only TV ad said pretty much the same. It presents a valid argument, and one that I think should be used. But not to the exclusion of others. Just saying it’s not about gay marriage isn’t going to help explain to those who are being told it is to understand the important distinction between religious freedoms and legal contracts. You have to know your audience and answer their specific objections.
Our union was previously recognized by our friends and family, and we had already had a civil union in Vermont and registered as domestic partners in our city and with my employer. All of which is great but doesn’t get you into the ER or confer the majority of the 1000+ benefits of legal marriage.
Most of the people we talked to in line with us in Portland were in the same boat. My point is that in my experience, the “rush to the altar” wasn’t a bunch of uncommitted gay couples saying “Let’s make a political statement!” or “let’s get out of mom and dad’s house!” as suggested above, but rather a bunch of highly committed gay couples saying “For an unknown amount of time we can get married in the eyes of the state–so drive fast.” When I say “we could,” I don’t mean that in the “because it was there” sense, but rather in the “opportunity knock” sense.
Well, we’re not moving towards a separation of church and state, we’re already there. We’ve kind of had it in place for a couple hundred years now, in fact.
It’s sounds like I’m nitpicking, or attacking someone who’s already on “my side,” but it’s just frustrating. It frustrates me that some people keep trying to act as if this is some radical, extremist new concept that’s going to to challenge everything we hold dear and rock the nation’s sense of family values and the role of law.
The separation of church and state. A three-leveled system of government with checks and balances between each. Two adults falling in love and deciding to get married and spend the rest of their lives together. These are not radical new concepts!
Miller said, “If you want the moon, ask for the moon and the stars.” Gay couples don’t want the moon. They just want what everyone else has.
And it’s frustrating that people keep acting as if civil unions are a valid compromise. For gay people in love, they’re not a compromise, they’re a lie. A “compromise” implies that two sides have valid viewpoints and are each making concessions in order for the greater good. Anti-SSM activists are not making any compromises. They are saying that gay couples do not have a true relationship and don’t deserve to have a true marriage. They’re giving no valid reasons why this is true. They act as if their lives, or their religions, are the ones being threatened, when they are not. They act as if the right of a person in a grocery store to call some total stranger a “pervert” is more important than the rights of people who are trying to live their lives in peace.
It doesn’t have to be that tough, or heartbreaking, or gut-wrenching. All it requires is that you ask yourself if your God truly has such scorn and condemnation for your friends that He would have them live the rest of their lives in loneliness and emptiness. Homosexuality and religion are not mutually exclusive; this is not “gays” vs. “Christians.” I’m both. There are plenty of gay-friendly congregations all over the place.
And frankly, that’s a process everyone has to go through for him or herself. It should have absolutely no bearing on what total strangers, who don’t necessarily share the same belief system as you, are allowed to do. I’m not going to give any leeway to someone who uses his own religious beliefs as justification for denying me my rights. I don’t see these people proposing Constitutional amendments against Muslim marriages, or atheist marriages, and those don’t jibe with Christianity either. But we’re supposed to sit back and debate, and compromise, and wait, and give leeway, and show sympathy for people who haven’t quite decided whether or not I’m entitled to the same things as they are?
Where’s the sympathy for people like Jeeves and Shoshanna, who have to jump through hoops and legal hurdles and bureaucratic nonsense just for what should be a loving, personal, and private ceremony?
Very well put. I am reminded of the two little boys: one says “I want the whole cake!” and the other says, “That’s not fair – I want half the cake!” Their mother says, “Boys, boys – let’s compromise. You can have three quarters of the cake, and you can have one quarter.”
Well, another seemingly pointless nitpick, but I don’t think this analogy is quite right, either. Acknowledging same-sex marriages doesn’t deprive anyone of anything.
It’s more like the mom’s got two cakes, gives one of them to one boy, and then asks him if the other boy should be allowed to have the second one. And he replies, “Hmmm… I’ll have to think about that one for a while. Let him gnaw on a carrot stick for a while until I’ve decided.”